


Only In Name And Blood

by Aaron_The_8th_Demon



Series: Ethics And Existentialism In Hell [2]
Category: Marvel, X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Blood and Gore, Childhood Trauma, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Explicit Language, F/M, Family Dynamics, Flashbacks, Government Experimentation, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Medical Experimentation, Medical Torture, Medical Trauma, Nightmares, Panic Attacks, Parent-Child Relationship, Past Rape/Non-con, Past Torture, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Prison, Psychological Torture, Psychological Trauma, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Sexual Content, Sibling Rivalry, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Therapy, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-25
Updated: 2017-06-08
Packaged: 2018-11-01 02:36:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 48,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10912590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aaron_The_8th_Demon/pseuds/Aaron_The_8th_Demon
Summary: Following up the events of *Monsters,* Jean and Logan are continuing to work on his mental health while also enjoying their new (very intense) relationship. Predictably, drama and conflict ensue - but not in the typical sense. When Logan's nightmares suddenly change to flashbacks and memories of his forgotten life in the military, an unusual request from an enemy offers a new lead to rediscover his past. What Logan doesn't consider is that his past is still looking for him, too.





	1. You've Got Mail

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warnings: besides getting into the usual torture territory that comes with Logan's baggage, there will also be major themes of self-harm and suicide. Reader disgression is advised.
> 
> As before, this AU is (mostly) in the movie-verse, but some things pulled from the comics. I had to get a little screwy with Logan's timeline because I also pulled quite a bit from *Origins* (yes I know, but it's only the important stuff I swear) and I needed to make the continuity match up.
> 
> And Sabertooth is still the Liev Schreiber incarnation, because Schreiber is about a thousand times more interesting and vicious than the guy in the first X-Men movie.
> 
> Like always, kudos/comments are appreciated, and please don't skewer me if I mess up with the characters. I'm really doing my best, I swear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I was going to wait until this narrative was finished before starting to post it, but I'm running out of time before the draft auto-deletes and this is turning out longer than I thought it would be... blame any spelling/grammar errors on that. I don't do beta-ing and the story is originally typed in Google Docs, so I don't have a great spellcheck and have to proofread everything myself. Haven't gotten any complaints so far, but I just wanted to put that out there.

 

“HGRRRRAAAAAAAAAAUUUGH!”

The glint of claws, shining from moonlight that somehow threaded in around the window curtains. Bunched muscles and tendons rippling with adrenaline. Suntanned skin with beads of sweat and winding veins. Thick black hair standing out at all angles, with matching eyebrows that overshadowed two blown pupils. Logan was a magnificent creature, even roaring and tensing after a nightmare.

Jean just stood and watched from the side of the bed; after a couple of months falling asleep beside him, she’d gotten very intuitive about when to jump away from him even if she wasn’t awake. As always, it only took ten or twenty seconds for him to realize he was back in the real world, and she sat on the mattress beside him as his claws slid back in.

“Was it the surgery?” Jean asked softly, rubbing his back in spite of how soaked his shirt was. He usually dreamed about the surgery.

“No.” Logan shook his head and then rubbed his face with his palms. An uneven sigh escaped him. “No, this was… dunno where it came from. Flyin’ ’round in a helicopter, all kinds’a trees’n shit goin’ by under us. An’... an’ someone else’s there, too, on a M-60 GPMG. Didn’t see him, but I’m tryn’a stop him, ’cause he’s just shootin’ down into the people. They ain’t soldiers, neither, just farmers an’ stuff. But he’s killin’ them an’ laughin’ while he does it. An’ I can’t stop him.”

That makes Jean freeze for a long moment. Reading up on her boyfriend’s various mental disorders so that she could treat them had brought her to a section on war-related PTSD, which Logan had all the hallmarks of beyond just “regular” PTSD. Between that and the dog-tags he’d worn when they’d rescued him, it was no question he’d been in some kind of military unit before the experiments. In that particular article, special attention had been given to the cases of soldiers returning after Vietnam, describing several of their experiences in detail, and what Logan had just described was a dead-ringer for the flashback of a Vietnam vet.

“You didn’t see his face?” Jean questioned, leaning into him with her arm across his back.

“No. Just saw his hands on the gun. Heard him laughin’ at them dyin’.”

“Did something happen today that was unusual? It could’ve reminded you of some past event.”

“Uh… the thing from SHIELD. Told you ’bout that, fuckin’ Sabertooth wantin’ me to go see him in prison. Fuck if I know why, though.”

That made her frown: “Yeah, you showed me the letter… but how would that connect to the memory of a war that happened almost fifty years ago…?”

“Huh?” Logan grunted, twitching his eyebrows in confusion at her.

“You were dreaming about Vietnam.”

“Shit. Kinda figured I’m an old bastard, but I guess I been kickin’ ’round longer’n I thought.”

“There might be a way for us to find out a little,” Jean offered, getting up from the bed to switch on the light. She scooped her laptop off her desk and sat on the edge of the mattress while it booted up. “The records from military units during that conflict may be online, and they’d have at least some of your info.”

“Hm.” Logan hesitantly scooted himself over to her, scowling. He’d remarked a few weeks ago that the way he knew he was up there in years was how incompetent he was with computers and his intense distrust of the internet especially. “Why?”

“All kinds of reasons,” she shrugged, tapping in her password and opening the browser. “Legal purposes, I think, or someone trying to find the guys he served with. Or even like you, they don’t remember and they want to figure everything out.”

Unfortunately, because Google wasn’t always the most reliable tool, it took them almost fifteen minutes to find what they were looking for. At least the site with the records had a search bar… which led to about forty different soldiers of varying ranks, all with the last name “Logan.” Assuming he’d been going by that name back then, of course.

“Gettin’ sick’a this,” he grumbled, cracking the joints in his neck and making her cringe at the noise. “Seen me in there, yet?”

“I’m still looking,” Jean sighed.

LOGAN, IAN  
LOGAN, ISAAC  
LOGAN, JAMAL

She opened the next one on the list in a new tab: LOGAN, JAMES. The scanned image of a photo popped up under the name as per usual, but it made her breath catch. It was unmistakably him, even though his hair was a little longer and more tame in the picture. But besides that, he looked exactly the same, right down to the hard grimace of impatience. Jean scrolled further to read the information.

HEIGHT: 6ft 3in  
WEIGHT: 247.02 lbs  
EYE COLOR: Brn  
BLOOD TYPE: AB-  
RELIGION: N/A  
DATE OF BIRTH: Unknown  
AGE AT END OF SERVICE: 31 yrs (approximate)  
ENLISTMENT DATE: 19 Apr 1968  
EXPIRY: 27 Feb 1973  
NOTES: 1SG Logan along with CPL Creed were charged with killing a senior officer on 26 February 1973. They were subsequently arrested, stripped of rank/awards, and executed by firing squad at 10.00 on 27 February 1973. Body was transferred to MAJ Stryker for research purposes at 14.45 on 27 February 1973. Logan and Creed were confirmed to exhibit traits of the mutated gene “x” on 01 March 1973. Further scientific results have been redacted as of 02 March 1973. ( _Information provided by CPT Dolan, Delta Company, 209 Airborne_ )

“Creed…” Jean whispered as she read to the bottom of the page. Sabertooth’s real name was Victor Creed - he’d been in the army with Logan? They’d gone to Vietnam together? “You’re not going to like this… Sabertooth is your old war buddy.”

“What?” he snorted, leaning over to look for himself. “‘Executed?’ Bullshit, ain’t no way they could’a killed me… it don’t say nothin’ ’bout Sabertooth, neither.”

“Creed is Sabertooth,” she explained. “But that explains why his request triggered you. Was he the one in the helicopter with you?”

“Dunno,” Logan shrugged, shaking his head. “Only ran into him that one time couple months back, don’t remember what he sounds like.”

Jean kept Logan’s file open, and used the main site’s search again to find Sabertooth. By contrast, that page wasn’t difficult to locate at all. A photo of Creed’s broad face loaded, wearing an eerily similar expression to Logan’s picture.

“Looks a little familiar,” her boyfriend commented, his eyebrows drawing together and showing how annoyed that made him. “Dunno why I didn’t just gut the fucker back then. I would’a known he’s such a cruel bastard just by meetin’ him.”

“Maybe you knew him before you both enlisted,” Jean suggested, scrolling down.

HEIGHT: 6ft 7in  
WEIGHT: 263.31 lbs  
EYE COLOR: Blu  
BLOOD TYPE: AB-  
RELIGION: N/A  
DATE OF BIRTH: Unknown  
AGE AT END OF SERVICE: 35 yrs (approximate)  
ENLISTMENT DATE: 19 Apr 1968  
EXPIRY: 27 Feb 1973  
NOTES: 1SG Logan along with CPL Creed were charged with killing a senior officer on 26 February 1973. They were subsequently arrested, stripped of rank/awards, and executed by firing squad at 10.00 on 27 February 1973. Body was transferred to MAJ Stryker for research purposes at 14.45 on 27 February 1973. Logan and Creed were confirmed to exhibit traits of the mutated gene “x” on 01 March 1973. Further scientific results have been redacted as of 02 March 1973. ( _Information provided by CPT Dolan, Delta Company, 209 Airborne_ )  
CPL Creed received a series of formal and informal reprimands, specifically for drinking on duty, insubordination, and hostile actions towards the other men in his squad. Prior to his arrest and execution, he received a disciplinary action for disobeying 1SG Logan’s order to cease firing on unarmed civilians from the air. ( _Provided by SSG McCready, 1 Squad, 3 Platoon, Delta Company, 209 Airborne_ )

“Guess I was his platoon sergeant,” Logan muttered thoughtfully, reading the page with her.

“But look at everything else,” Jean frowned, pointing at the screen without touching so that it wouldn’t leave a fingerprint. “You both enlisted and were ‘executed’ on the exact same dates. His blood group is the same as yours, even though AB is the rarest phenotype. Your approximate ages are close, your height and weight are both similar. He even scowls like you do.”

“Fuck,” Logan hissed under his breath as Jean flicked back and forth between his and Creed’s photos. The vicious fighter she’d tried to apprehend several times seemed to be drilling his eyes through the screen, an intense expression on his broad face where her boyfriend’s was more angular and severe. But the similarities were hard to miss - nose, ears, forehead, their muscular necks and thick hair - and, she noticed, for some reason they’d also decided to trim their beards the same way. “Fuck, that ain’t right… Jeannie, you don’t think… he ain’t…”

“I’m sorry.” She shook her head, looking over to see the shock and horror that poisoned his handsome features. “We should’ve realized sooner, even, because his mutation is almost exactly like yours. Creed has to be either your brother or a cousin on your father’s side.”

“Jesus,” Logan whimpered for a moment before getting a grip on himself. He sighed, but then cut it short into a huff of frustration. “Gimme some good news, darlin’. Can’t do nothin’ to make this better on my own.”

“SHEILD has more than tripled the amount of security around him, as well as The Vault in general,” Jean offered. “Even if he does manage to get out again, it won’t be for years at least. Besides, even if you don’t have anything to do with him after this, at least you know you’re not the only one anymore.”

“Yeah, well, now I kinda wish I still _was_ the only one. Or better, that _he_ was. Still real sick’a this whole ‘bein’ alive’ thing, darlin’. It ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

“Would it help to know that I asked Ororo to pick up ten pounds of sirloin steaks for you this week?”

Logan tried to glare at her, but it twisted into a smirk and he couldn’t hold back a chuckle. “Maybe a little bit. ’Sides, I got you, too. That makes up for most’a the bullshit I gotta deal with anyway.”

“I think she got you a few pork roasts, too.” Jean snapped her computer shut and set it on the floor so that she could pull him into a hug. Logan rolled his head against her neck to kiss the underside of her jaw. “Hey, stop that. Your beard is tickling me…”

She couldn’t stop the childish giggle that followed, because it _was_ tickling her, so her only retaliation was to pinch his flank, because she’d discovered it was _his_ ticklish spot. He immediately yelped and sprang back away from her, landing heavily on the mattress. He was grinning at her in spite of the bags under his eyes.

“Alright, that’s enough of that,” Jean told him in a tone that left no room for uncertainty. “You need to get some sleep.”

“Grmph,” Logan rumbled in protest, but ultimately gave in. “Fine, dammit. But this’s gonna get picked back up in the mornin’.”

“Okay,” she nodded, giving a tired smile. She got up briefly to flick the light back off and snuggled up to his side, kissing the hard muscle of his shoulder. “Try to dream about me instead, baby.”

“Yeah, I got so much control over that… c’mere, darlin’.” He pulled her into the warmth of his chest and cocooned her in his arms; she didn’t think she’d ever get tired of the feeling and safety of it. “Love you.”

“I love you too, Logan. Sleep tight.”

He chuckled a little, tucking her head into his neck under his chin. They fell back asleep almost instantly, and no dreams came for either of them.

* * *

 

“It could actually be a good idea,” Ororo slowly offered.

Logan almost choked on the meat he was chewing, spitting it out violently onto the floor over his shoulder and then coughing himself hoarse trying to get bits of gristle out of his lungs and bronchus. “The fuck you thinkin’ over there, ’Ro? I miss somethin’?”

“Hear me out,” she replied, offering a napkin as he wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his green plaid shirt. “At the very least, it could be a way to gather intel. Such a strange request obviously has a motive behind it, and I can’t help but feel you owe it to yourself to at least find out what he wants.”

“I ain’t thrilled ’bout seein’ that fuck-stick ever again unless he’s on the end’a my claws,” Logan growled, stabbing his fork into the next chunk of beef with unnecessary force. “Fuckin’ gut him an’ wear his intestines as laces for my boots-”

“I’m trying to eat,” Jean snapped on his left, elbowing him in the ribs. “There’s a reason Hank usually handles the surgeries and autopsies instead of me.”

“Sorry,” he muttered, looking down at his plate. “Just fuckin’ hate that bastard.”

“We all do, trust me. But… I actually kind of agree with her on this one. It could be a good idea just so that you can figure out what he’s up to.”

“You remember what I said, though?” Logan asked, but not angrily anymore. He softened his expression for his girlfriend and he let her feel his concern. “Ain’t gonna leave you alone again, ever. ’Specially not for Sabertooth. But I ain’t gonna bring you with me there, neither, that’s just askin’ for trouble. Not doin’ it, darlin’.”

 _*What happened wasn’t your fault,*_ her voice came to his mind. _*I wasn’t paying close enough attention to my surroundings.*_

_Yeah, an’ who were you thinkin’ ’bout when it happened? Me. ’Cause I left like a jackass. I ain’t takin’ a chance on him hurtin’ you again, baby. I really don’t wanna do this._

“Is he switching?” Ororo questioned, drawing them back. She looked slightly worried.

“Hm? Oh, no, he’s fine,” Jean shook her head. “Just a side note.”

“Don’t do that so much these days,” Logan added, shrugging. “Hank makes me eat ’bout fifty pills every mornin’, but seems to be doin’ somthin’ to shut him up in there, so I ain’t gonna bitch ’bout it.”

“We had to answer a lot of questions about that,” Jean groaned, rolling her eyes. “Apparently the whistle gets blown when we start ordering powerful antipsychotics and ADHD medications in mass quantities.”

“ADHD meds?” Logan questioned, raising an eyebrow at her.

“The bupropion is labeled for use in patients with that disorder, but it’s a dopamine antagonist, so it can work well as an antidepressant. That’s why you’ve been a lot less cranky.”

“So what type of questions were asked?” Ororo wondered, looking somewhat fascinated by this story.

“Why a school would need to stock these medications in bulk, mostly. They were making sure we weren’t selling them to junkies or the black market. We didn’t use your name, though,” she assured him, which made Logan feel a little better. “Just explained that we had a patient whose body is very efficient at filtering out toxins and would need a higher dosage. They wouldn’t ship us anything until Hank and I sent copies of our credentials in _triplicate._ ”

“I heard my name, what about me and credentials?” Speaking of Hank. He was now moving to sit across from Logan with his own lunch, but Logan didn’t mind. The other feral was hard not to like.

“Tellin’ ’Ro ’bout my pills,” he volunteered before downing another huge bite of steak.

“Ah,” the furry blue mutant nodded, adjusting his glasses briefly before turning his tray to make his soup closest to him. “Not to change the subject, but I heard you received mail yesterday.”

Logan grimaced. “Yup.”

“And… I understand it was written by Victor Creed and sent from prison.”

“Yup.”

“What did he want?”

“Wants me to visit him there.”

“Are you going to?” Hank frowned. “It could be a good opportunity to assess-”

“The fuck’s goin’ on this mornin’? All’a you decided to gang up on me ’bout this?” Logan snapped, glaring at Hank and Ororo. “I ain’t doin’ it, the end. Feel free to fuck off at any time.”

“Even for the opportunity to rub in his face that you’re the one who caught him and put him back in The Vault?” Jean pointed out after a moment of tense silence.

Well, shit. How did this woman always get to him? No matter how much he struggled to be obstinate, she always drew that little smirk from him in the end.

“Because I have you wrapped around my finger,” she teased when he had that thought. A peck to his upper cheek just over where his facial hair ended. “And you love it, too.”

“How the hell’d it get this bad, darlin’?” He couldn’t keep the words from coming out in a chuckle, pulling her to his side briefly and kissing her on the temple.

“Because I’m right and you know it.” Jean poked him lightly before going back to her own tray of food. “It’ll be fine, Logan. He’ll probably be chained to the floor and on so many tranquilizers he can’t uncross his eyes. You’ll be right in front of him if he tries anything, and there’ll be literally thousands of SHIELD guards around. I’ll just wait in the next room and maintain a psychic link, okay?”

“God dammit,” Logan growled under his breath, shaking his head. “Whatever. Fine. I’ll go visit Sabertooth in prison an’ try gettin’ his motives.”

“Just so that you’re aware,” Beast smiled, “the majority of us residing in the mansion are in unanimous agreement that you’re an adorable pair.”

“Call me that again, furball, an’ I’mma turn you into a rug.”

“It’s a compliment,” Ororo laughed. “And he’s right. I once heard a student commenting something along the lines of you being so in love with her that it’s almost sickening.”

“I’mma finish eatin’ with the TV,” Logan grumbled decisively, squeezing Jean’s shoulder before carrying his plate out of the cafeteria.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The army unit they came from is totally made up by me.
> 
> Their eye colors are listed wrong on purpose; Logan's eyes are actually hazel and Victor's eyes are actually gray (I think. There isn't a great shot of his eyes in Origins). Obviously their listed ages are wrong, too, because they'd been trying to lay low.
> 
> It's not an accident that Victor ranks lower even though Logan's the younger brother. It's also not an accident that Victor has more notes than Logan in his file, because Logan's still (slightly) better at keeping his temper in check.
> 
> Abbreviations:  
> CPL=Corporal  
> SSG=Staff Sergeant  
> 1SG=First Sergeant  
> CPT=Captain  
> MAJ=Major  
> GPMG=General purpose machine gun


	2. The Vault

Getting to The Vault took more than a week in total - contacting SHIELD to explain, setting up a time to go to one of their field offices so an agent could determine that Logan wasn’t going to try breaking Sabertooth free (as if), arranging him to go to a _different_ field office with Jean and them being taken through an underground bullet train to some undisclosed location.

Once inside, Logan figured out very quickly that the only means of ingress was from the underground passages. There were no windows to be seen, the exterior walls were about as thick as he was tall and every two feet a SHIELD soldier armored and armed to the teeth was posted. Surveillance cameras covered the ceiling as well, hitting every possible angle to ensure no blind spots, and there were wall-mounted turrets that rapid fired syringes loaded with enough tranquilizers to take down six elephants each.

In spite of this, he wasn’t particularly impressed. There would always be ways to break out, get around the systems. It didn’t help that many of the supervillains had friends and cohorts that hadn’t been caught yet, and were undoubtedly looking to spring them.

“Authorization forms?” the agent behind the desk grunted, holding out a palm without looking up from the four computer screens in front of him and madly typing with the other hand.

“Here,” Jean answered, passing over the neatly stapled packet that the first field office had issued them.

“Hmm… X-Men to interrogate a captured enemy. Names and photo IDs.”

“He doesn’t have any,” she explained while digging the driver’s license out of her wallet. “They gave us temporary papers.”

“Mm-hm. Alright.” The small rectangle of plastic was handed back, along with two yellow badges that had magnetic strips on the back. “Keep them clipped to your shirt collars and visible at all times. Should you lose one or both, the entire facility will go on lockdown and you will be detained until they are found. Stay in the center of the hall at all times and do not approach the bars, glass, or force-fields beyond the marked safe point. Agent Hoyle and Agent Crewe will assist you, they should arrive in the next five minutes.”

 _*All of the guards here are ordinary humans with nero-inhibitor chips at the base of their skulls,*_ Jean commented as they leaned against the wall to wait. _*Apparently there aren’t just telepathic inmates, but also some who can take control of people with the x-gene.*_

_Fan-fuckin’-tastic._

_*I’ve always been fascinated by this place,*_ she admitted. _*There were a few incidents where I had to come here before because Scott or Mystique needed my help in an interrogation, and every time the security’s only gotten more intense. The last time Sabertooth was caught, though, it was Scott and Emma.*_

Two soldiers in matte black armored suits approached, which must’ve been the agents who’d been assigned to them. The woman held out her hand for Logan to shake, which he did, though hesitantly.

“Good morning, I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m Agent Hoyle, and this is Agent Crewe, my partner.” Hoyle turned to address Jean. “You’re here for Creed, Dr. Grey?”

“Yes,” she nodded. “This is Logan, he recently took up residence with us. He’s the one who apprehended Creed, and he did it by himself.”

“I see. That’s quite a feat, Mr. Logan.”

He just grunted, shrugging. These people made him a little uneasy and he didn’t feel like talking to them.

“He’s been moved back to C Block now that his cell’s been upgraded,” Crewe informed them as the group moved up the long hallway. “He’s never asked to send mail before, but we checked it first and determined there was nothing compromising before allowing him to have it sent. Although… I admit, it’s quite unusual that he asked for a specific X-Man to perform the interrogation.”

“I ain’t-” Logan started to correct him, but a look from his girlfriend cut him off and he cleared his throat. “I ain’t exactly sure why, neither.”

They entered an elevator and Hoyle had to scan her badge and thumbprint just to get the doors to close, and then punch in a code before selecting the floor. She had to put in the code a second time to make it start moving.

“A Block and B Block are on the above-ground levels,” Hoyle offered conversationally. “They’re used for holding the less powerful inmates, about on par with general population for a conventional penitentiary. C Block and D Block, however, are exclusively for detainees requiring solitary confinement. C Block especially is designed for those with unstable mental health or the motivation to harm themselves. Creed possesses both of those traits, but we’ve come to believe his inclination to self-harm is a way for him to express boredom.”

“Okay,” Logan grunted, not knowing how else to respond. _A’ready kinda figured on him bein’ five cans short of a six-pack._

Sabertooth’s cell was one of the most heavily secured and guarded, which considering the already dense containment measures was really saying something. There was a cot bolted to the corner of the floor in back with no pillow or blankets. A sink/toilet in the other back corner, simply molded out of the wall as opposed to a separate fixture. And a chair that was molded out of the metal floor. He was sitting in it with a light blue prison jumpsuit and some kind of collar around his thick neck; there were cylindrical restraints obscuring his limbs up to the elbows and knees, as well as several locked chains binding his chest to the back of the chair.

Creed immediately wore a sneering grin when Logan appeared, staring holes into each other’s foreheads. There was a set of thick inner bars behind a foot-thick plate of clear glass and then the unmistakable buzz of a force field. It wasn’t visible aside from a blue tinge around the very edges, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t impossible to miss. Agent Crewe dismissed the guards to the hall for the interrogation, where Jean and Agent Hoyle were also waiting, but would stay himself to ensure nothing was compromised.

“Gonna be honest with you, Jimmy. Didn’t actually think you’d come.”

Logan didn’t even give the satisfaction of seeing him scowl, instead maintaining a hard but neutral visage. “Well, y’know, here’s the problem with that, bub. I ain’t gonna be too predictable if I can help it. An’ ’sides that, just had to get the pleasure’a seein’ you rottin’ in this hell-hole. You better hope you stay in there, too, ’cause the second you get out I’mma be done with the dickin’ ’round. You ain’t gonna like what happens after that, neither.”

“You wanna take me, runt?” Creed spat, still leering with bared fangs. “A’ready kicked your sorry ass a bunch’a times before. How’s that girly’a yours doin’, by the way? Feel’a her after I got there first? Bet you take her the same way I did, an’ make her moan for you like a whore.”

Logan was a hair’s thickness from going ballistic at that, but somehow managed to keep his indifferent posture on the outside.

“Ah, c’mon, bub, I ain’t here to talk ’bout nobody ’sides you an’ you know it. So tell me… weren’t it you who was gunnin’ down helpless civilians from that chopper in ’Nam? Guess you always had a thing for hurtin’ innocents just ’cause you can’t handle how much you really hate _yourself._ ”

That had actually been a bluff on Logan’s part, betting on Creed having a similar self-loathing to his own. The inmate still displayed the elongated spikes in his jaws, but a muscle under his eye twitched. _Yes._ The gamble had paid off, and that almost imperceptible slip gave it away. Now, Logan returned the vicious smile, suddenly feeling cruel but being okay with it for once.

“You fuckin’ hate it, don’t you? Yeah… knowin’ you ain’t never gonna be nothin’ but the blood-hungry psychopath you are. ’Cause you ain’t got no family, neither, nobody to give a shit ’bout you. Just by yourself in that little box until the end’a time. Just burns you up that I got all that, right?” His voice dropped into a sharp whisper and he sneered through the glass. “Nice place to live. Maybe even a couple’a friends, y’know? An’ I _know_ I can get more outta life than you ever could.”

Well, Jean told him things like that. But he didn’t need to actually believe it to sell it to Creed, and Creed was becoming more and more obviously sold with each word.

“You think you’re better’n me, Jimmy?” Creed hissed. “Broke off your claws an’ handed you over to Stryker myself, but you don’t remember that after he shot you in the face twice, right? Oh yeah, runt. You keep on lookin’ at me like that. I fuckin’ hauled your ass in an’ he ’bout lit up like a kid at Christmas. I know more ’bout you than you do.”

“Maybe I know more'n you think I do,” Logan countered, cocking his head to one side. “An’ maybe I’mma use that knowledge to fuck with you even if you’re locked up in there. Know three diff’r’nt psychics, too. Bet I could get one’a them to make you think you’re a six-year-old girl for the rest’a your days… or maybe make you beat your head into the wall until you ain’t sure where you are no more. How’d you like that, bub? Little high-impact brain therapy? Bet it’d do great things for your charmin’ personality, too.”

“Speak for yourself, runt. I ain’t the one with prior head damage.”

“Then why you act the way you do, huh?” Logan demanded, bringing up his fiercest and most disbelieving glare in an instant. “You always like this, bub? Angry bastard that rapes an’ kills for fun? You don’t wanna give two flyin’ fucks ’bout nothin’, even though you really do it so you don’t gotta think ’bout how shitty your life really is. Fuckin’ disgustin’ way to be an’ you know it. So I ain’t wastin’ no more time on you.”

Logan abruptly left without another word, leaving his enemy to stew. Out in the hall again, it was all he could do to stop from ramming his claws into the wall and giving in to a fit of rage right there. He wasn’t over the vile things Sabertooth had said about Jean, who was holding his hand and wearing a very concerned expression. She’d probably picked up everything through his mind.

_*Do you need lorazepam?*_

_Need to fuckin’ kill that piece’a shit, can’t let him get away with none’a what he did or said._

_*I’m giving you your dose of lorazepam when we get back to the mansion, before you have another episode. You’ve been doing really well on these medications, but they can’t do it all and you still_ refuse _to calm down on your own.*_

 _I ain’t gonna fuckin’ calm down until I get to rip his skin off!_ Logan projected forcefully, so hard that she stumbled into the wall and a trickle of blood escaped from one of her nostrils. Shit, he forgot he wasn’t supposed to mentally shout when she was standing so close to him. _Sorry for that… didn’t mean it, Jeannie. Just so fuckin’ pissed that I can’t do nothin’ to make him pay…_

Jean’s hand slipped back into his and he clenched his fingers around it, suddenly realizing he’d ground his jaws so tightly that some of his molars had cracked themselves. They were already healing, but until the nerve endings were covered again, it was incredibly painful.

Logan hadn’t realized she’d said anything to the pair of SHIELD agents who were escorting them, but she must have been quite convincing, because they stopped and went into a secured room before reaching the elevator and agreed to her request. He rolled his eyes, but grudgingly allowed Jean to push the sleeve of his flannel out of the way and inject a concentration of the sedative into his arm that would be strong enough to kill five people.

It took all of two seconds for a soothing heavy feeling to creep through his limbs, and after that his heartbeat slowed to a normal pace. Logan had only been forced to take this medication once before, during a panic attack so severe he’d been trying to claw his own skull open so that it would stop. This was a slightly lower dose, so he didn’t immediately pass out, but he certainly didn’t feel like moving any time soon. His eyes vaguely lost some focus while he watched Jean toss the needle into the sharps box and snap off her gloves.

“Better?” she asked, leading him back towards the elevator by the wrist.

“Uh-huh,” Logan mumbled. The haze that was called lorazepam had soaked into every corner of his brain and he didn’t have the presence of mind to say much else right then. Not entirely lucid, it didn’t seem to take long at all for them to be back in Salem, and if the dose had been a single milligram higher she would’ve had to telekinetically carry him into the school.

After that Logan sprawled himself limply across one of the couches in the TV room, flipping to some nature program and then dozing off and on for a couple of hours. By the time he’d finally metabolized the sedative and gotten back to normal, it was almost time for dinner. Shit, how long had it really taken for them to make their way to The Vault and back? And how long had he been harassing Sabertooth for when he was there?

After locating his girlfriend typing some kind of medical document in her room, Logan silently knelt behind her chair and smirked at the startled yelp when he slid his arms around her.

“God, Logan, you scared me,” Jean breathed, turning to look at him over her shoulder. He rested his chin on the back of her chair. “Did you have a nice nap on the couch?”

“You puttin’ me down for naps like a toddler, now?” he snickered, raising an eyebrow at her.

“You needed one, and you have nobody to blame but yourself, mister,” Jean teased. She twisted in her seat to kiss his forehead and then the bridge of his nose, making him close his eyes briefly. “Are you feeling better?”

“Yeah. Thanks, darlin’, I prob’ly did need a little help with that,” he admitted. “I got some bad anger issues.”

“That’s for damn sure,” she muttered dryly, then smiled and kissed him again. “It’s okay, baby. We just need to keep working on it, that’s all.”

Logan climbed back to his feet, then pulled Jean to hers as well so that he could hug her to his chest and nuzzle his face into her long hair. She smelled so good, especially her hair, and sometimes he asked her to sleep in his flannels because they’d carry her scent the next day when he wore them.

“The hell was I talkin’ ’bout just now?” Logan wondered when he lifted his head back up. He was an extremely sensory animal and had completely lost his train of thought.

“You weren’t,” Jean laughed, stroking a finger idly up his back. “You were drowning yourself in my hair again.”

Logan snorted, then leaned in to find her mouth with his. Nine weeks or so that he’d been able to look at Jean and mentally label her as _girlfriend,_ as _his,_ and the sparks still jolted through him the way they had the first time he’d kissed her. Just seeing her nearby or catching her scent got his whole body tingling and made him think that if he loved her more than he already did, he’d probably burst at the seams.

It was also making him get really hot under the collar - the chlorpromazine and bupropion made Wolverine sit down and be quiet, but there were still threads of canine behavior laced too tightly to suppress. And that wolfish instinct recognized Jean as Logan’s mate, making him extremely territorial and protective of her but also incredibly horny. Because it saw the need to mark her, show definitively that she was his and his alone. She always insisted it made her feel safe and loved, and that she thought it was endearing, but even without smelling dishonesty in those statements he didn’t understand how it wasn’t annoying or oppressive for her.

“Stop it,” Jean murmured between kisses.

“Stop what?”

“Thinking like that. Just focus on me, Logan. Don’t think about anything else.”

“Can’t help it, darlin’...”

“Hey.” Her palms on either side of his face, thumbs stroking into his dark scruff. “Let’s go get some kind of take-out, that way you don’t have to talk to anybody. We can come back here and eat it out in the woods if you want, okay? Then you can just sit with me and we’ll listen to the trees and forget about how bad things sucked today.”

Logan almost got lost in her soft brown eyes, but eventually nodded.

“A’right, let’s do that. What kinda take-out you like best?”

“No, you pick, you’re the one who had to actually deal with him after all.”

“Chinese food,” he decided, not having to think about it. He liked Japanese food better, but there wasn’t really Japanese take-out around here, so he’d make do. “None’a that healthy crap for you neither, baby. You’re gonna eat bad food with me an’ you’re gonna like it.”

Jean laughed, “Alright, fine. I don’t think I’ve eaten Chinese in more than a year.”

They ended up perched in one of Logan’s favorite trees while they had dinner, which was a bucket-load of beef lo mein and crab rangoons. He ate most of it like always, but his ridiculous metabolism demanded a high number of calories. It was a very quiet night in the forest, especially considering that it was summer, but Logan knew it was because many of the animals could smell him and recognized him as a predator. He didn’t mind. The silence was never uncomfortable when he was with Jean.

The lowering sun trickled in through the leaves and branches, warming patches of his skin. One beam of golden light hit her hair, making it catch fire. She was so beautiful like this, he thought, with her face wreathed in the blazing red locks and the tranquility of nature all around her. Especially because she was in casual wear and looked very relaxed.

_*Are you still awake over there?*_

Logan blinked; he’d been staring at her with his fork halfway raised, grinning stupidly. He gave an embarrassed snort.

 _Sorry. Just love seein’ you this way, all lit up in the sun here with me. Nobody else nearby an’ just eatin’ together like normal people for once._ He let a real smile come to the surface, one of the ones he only showed to her. _I ever tell you how much I love you, Jeannie? Don’t know how you put up with me, but somebody oughta give you an award or somethin’._

_*I told you to stop thinking about things like that, baby. You’ll give yourself a headache, or give me one, or both.*_

Logan couldn’t resist a light tease: _You’re that worried ’bout it, darlin’, I can make all the blood in my brain go someplace else an’ then I won’t be thinkin’ too much._

Jean rolled her eyes at him and returned a jab; he hadn’t actually expected anything from that comment. So it was kind of a nice surprise to end up on the ground, curling over her while she was on her hands and knees and pushing back against his every movement.


	3. Damaged Love

Waking up the next morning saw them in a tangled heap. They’d (eventually) gone back to Logan’s bedroom, sleeping heavily and without dreams after so much passionate sex that they almost forgot their own names. Now, Jean discovered she couldn’t even sit up, because between the bedding twisting them into a knot and her boyfriend’s crushing weight pinning most of her to the mattress, she was thoroughly trapped until he woke up.

She certainly wasn’t going to bother Logan, though, or at least not yet. It almost never happened that he got eight hours of real, uninterrupted sleep, and despite being held fast by his metal-ridden body she could still breathe and her arms and legs hadn’t gone numb either. So for the moment, Jean was fine as she was, just listening to the slow but strong pounding behind his chest.

Besides, Logan was almost always up before her, and she liked watching him struggle back into consciousness after nights like the previous one. Practically as soon as she had the thought, his fingers clenched into fists and his face started twitching.

“Hhgggrrrrrrmm,” Logan groaned, tensing his muscles for a second before stretching and rolling away. “Ugh. Really wore me out, there, baby.”

“You insisted on doing all the hard work,” she joked, getting up and beginning to look for her clothes. “So it’s entirely on you for the fact you were so out of it after that you didn’t even clean yourself off. You’ll have to change the sheets, now.”

“But now they smell like you,” he protested, grinning and raising his head enough to peer at her groggily. “Smell you all over me, too. Gettin’ me hard all over again…”

“You’re insatiable,” Jean laughed, finding she was unable to salvage her own clothes after he'd shredded them with his claws; she ended up just stealing a pair of his boxers and a clean undershirt. “And no. You need to get dressed and take your medications anyway, _ignoring_ the fact I can already barely walk straight.”

“Heh, yeah, surprised you’re walkin’ at all, darlin’,” Logan snickered. “I’mma take a shower, Jeannie, be down for my meds in ten minutes.”

“Okay,” she agreed, smiling before heading to her own room.

There wasn’t really anything going on today as far as she knew, and summer vacation for the students didn’t end until the beginning of next month, so Jean didn’t feel bad about throwing on one of her more well-worn pairs of pants and a bra but keeping her boyfriend’s clothes. He always liked it when she did, because then her smell was close to him all day when he wore them later.

Jean smiled to herself at that thought while she was working the worst knots out of her hair to put it into a lazy ponytail. She liked wearing his shirts every so often; they were just short-sleeved cotton undershirts that were loose on her shoulders, but it was a relaxed feeling. Even Logan’s boxers were a welcome relief, like the freedom of going commando without actually going commando. Why were men’s clothes always so much more comfortable?

Actually, though, Logan himself had commented once while getting dressed that he didn’t like wearing underpants at all, and only tolerated them after accidentally catching his foreskin in the zipper of his jeans one too many times. He’d also pointed out that healing almost instantly didn’t mean it wasn’t extremely painful. Jean had cringed when he’d told her that.

Socks, old sneakers and baby powder-scented deodorant later, she went downstairs for coffee after pressing her ear to Logan’s door and heard his shower still running. Ororo was down in the kitchen finishing her own breakfast when Jean came in, and instantly offered her an amused smile.

“What’s so funny?”

“You missed Scott complaining over his scrambled eggs that he wishes his and Emma’s room wasn’t right across the hall from yours. And then something about Logan deliberately stomping on the stairs and growling things that he didn’t feel like hearing at eleven-thirty at night.”

Jean couldn’t stop herself from a fit of embarrassed laughter at that, nearly dumping her coffee and ruining her boyfriend’s shirt. “I think I’m glad I wasn’t around for that conversation.” She put in the hazelnut and stirred briefly before a long sip. “But Logan wasn’t deliberately stomping, he just got excited.”

“I gathered…”

“He had a really rough time yesterday at The Vault, though,” Jean sighed, smile faltering. “So I’m not going to push him too much for the next week or so. Being contacted by Sabertooth at all made him start having war flashbacks from his old life.”

Ororo nodded, frowning sympathetically. “I understand. He probably needs a brief rest.”

“You two talkin’ ’bout me over there?” Logan asked, clomping heavily into the kitchen. His scruff had been newly trimmed (with a real razor, now, because even with his healing Jean got nervous seeing his claws so close to his face) and his hair was still damp, making him look especially clean and fresh.

“Just saying that I’m not going to make you work as hard this week,” she answered, eyes following him across the room to the fridge while he rummaged for some kind of protein.

“Hm, finally get that Camaro done,” Logan grunted, plunged almost up to his belt in the refrigerator and poking through it for something to eat that passed as breakfast. “Gotta run to the parts store for that though… or maybe…” His head popped up from behind the door briefly. “I’mma be diggin’ ’round in junk yards all day, darlin’. You wanna just stay here? I know you ain’t really int'r'sted in engine repair crap.”

“Sure,” Jean shrugged. “There’s probably some case study or medical journal I should be reading anyway, and I’ll do a little bit of the prep-work for when school starts again. If you get back before dinner, just let me know and I’ll check in on you in the garage every so often, okay?”

“Yup,” he nodded, quirking his eyebrows. “I’mma take a comm, though. Anythin’ happens here, just gimme a shout. Don’t really like havin’ you here by yourself even with Sabertooth penned in.”

* * *

 

Scrap yards and car salvage dumps - the rust, mud and oil smelled like home to him. Logan had been carefully picking over every vehicle for an hour now, usually coming up empty but occasionally tossing a usable component into his backpack. They weren’t necessarily what he needed for the Camaro (in fact so far he’d only recovered one piece for that particular car), but the more spares he could scavenge the less time he’d have to spend looking through a Bond Auto Parts while trying not to eviscerate other customers that stood too close to him.

Okay, so he was technically stealing the random bits and pieces, seeing how the owners of these junk lots didn’t know he was there, but Logan had never really concerned himself with such pointless morals before and he wasn’t about to start today. He didn't feel like shelling out for used parts if he could help it, and with his enhanced senses and military training they didn’t have a chance in hell of catching him anyway.

Logan suddenly tensed with his grimy hands buried in the engine of a smashed Jeep Rubicon - every dark hair on his chest and back was prickling, standing up beneath his undershirt and flannel. It was some kind of reflex - Jeannie called it “posturing” - to make him look bigger and more threatening, not that he really needed help with either of those. But it also meant someone was watching him.

Forcing himself not to give any outward sign that he’d noticed, Logan let his strong fingers play with the mechanical parts, but wasn’t paying attention to them anymore. All his senses were scanning the area now. 16 - no, 17… he could feel more and more of them. Dammit, they knew he noticed them, too, and were closing in.

_Fuck. Fuck, fuck, FUCK! The meds… don’t got Wolverine to save me this time, gotta take them down all on my own…_

Logan dove, throwing himself flat and extending his claws a fraction of a second before the weapons started firing. But he could already tell - tranq darts. _FUCK!_ They wanted him alive. They wanted him alive, which meant he knew exactly who _they_ actually were. No, they couldn’t take him again, couldn’t drag him off as an experiment. Jean had done so much and worked so hard to get him to where he was now, starting to think straight without the voice of his other mind and even eating food with utensils instead of his fingers.

The syringes smacked into wrecked vehicles around him, breaking open and assaulting his sensitive nose with the stink of strong chemical toxins. Logan bolted through the maze of junk at top speed, knowing he couldn’t get them all before they managed to down him and take him prisoner with those damn darts. His jeans and flannel caught often on the jagged metal each time he charged through gaps and crevasses, but his scraped arms and legs healed like always so he paid it no mind, much more interested in escaping.

Logan sprang up from the dirt to vault over a commercial shipping truck using his palms to propel himself from the top - and was immediately caught by at least ten sharp jabs into his chest and stomach. _FUCK!_ A second group had been waiting for him on the other side, and the drugs were already burning their way through his bloodstream. With a roar of pain, outrage and overwhelming fear of being dragged back to their hell, he sprinted to the nearest one and tore out the soldier’s throat.

Every step, heartbeat, breath, drained him more. Fuck, the chemicals were already taking effect, fuck, fuck, he had to kill as many of them as he could and drag himself to safety… hide until they wore off and get back home…

_Fuck…_

Logan’s legs buckled under him and he did a clumsy face-plant into the dust two feet from his next intended victim. _NO!_ he screamed inside his own head, doing anything he could to get back up, keep fighting, _run,_ get away before they could drag him off…

_No…_

His hazel eyes rolled back into his head and closed. They were just too heavy to stay open anymore. No, he couldn’t let them do this, he had to get away and go back to Jean…

_Jeannie..._

Jean Grey, his amazing girlfriend, the only person he could ever remember loving. And she’d probably never even find him…

_No…_

Logan blacked out as the chains were being locked around his body.

* * *

 

7 PM, 8 PM, 9 PM. At 9:30 that night Jean was struggling not to get hysterical over the fact Logan hadn’t returned or contacted her. She anxiously paced back and forth up the hall outside their bedrooms, twisting the hem of his shirt around her index finger before unwinding it again only to repeat the action a few seconds later.

_Something happened. Something must’ve happened, he’s usually back before eight… Maybe Creed got out again and went after him because of what he said yesterday. Maybe the government caught him. Maybe his meds are about to stop working and he switched and now he’s running around as Wolverine. Maybe-_

“Jean? You okay?”

She whipped around to see Scott standing a few yards from her, watching.

“Don’t even say it,” Jean warned. “Something went wrong, that’s why he’s not here.”

Her ex-boyfriend shook his head, not saying anything but still channeling his arrogant _I-told-you-so_ expression and crossing his arms. God, she hated that look; the team leader could be pretty self-aggrandizing at times, especially during situations like this one. It was to the point now that she wondered why she’d dated him for such a long time before Emma had joined the squad.

“Well, we’ll just have to wait and see before Charles gets back,” Scott shrugged eventually. Incredible. Now he was actually condescending her like she was a child throwing a tantrum over a missing toy. “It probably wouldn’t be a good idea for you to try using Cerebro, after all.”

Jean just gave him a hard stare for a moment before going into her bedroom and fighting very hard not to slam the door. Of course she knew she shouldn’t use Cerebro, it took such concentration that she risked Phoenix getting free by doing so. But that didn’t mean Scott needed to be such a patronizing ass about the whole thing. She knew he didn’t like Logan, and his insecurities wanted to think that even though he’d more or less cheated on her that she would still somehow belong to him. _Belong._ Like a thing, property. It hurt his fragile ego that she’d found someone else.

Logan’s damaged mind also had a sense of extreme possessiveness, but not in the same way - the amount of love and affection he’d grown for Jean was stronger and more overpowering than anything he’d experienced before, even the agony he’d been put through, and he’d never be anything resembling happy unless she was. To him, that was his job: she would always be safe because he'd shred anything that got too close or looked at her funny, always be comfortable because he'd wrap her up in blankets and snuggle her against his warm body. Anything less was unacceptable and he’d destroy everything that posed even a slight threat to her wellbeing.

Normally, anyone displaying that type of attitude would be considered obsessive and dangerous. Well, alright, Logan _was_ obsessive and dangerous, but not in that sense. Because everything was insignificant compared to making her feel loved and cherished after he’d never felt it himself before they'd met. He didn’t give a damn what happened to him, as long as Jean was taken care of.

Actually, Jean realized, it was a horrific concept when examined in the light of day. Her boyfriend had been so viciously tormented and ripped apart that he couldn’t help seeing the entire world as the same hell he’d been rescued from, and would throw himself into the line of fire without a second thought because he couldn’t bear to let the same thing happen to her.

While that brand of love was often very comforting and tender and uniquely _Logan_ at its core, she hated what had been done to make him that way. He always worried and fixated with the idea that even though they loved each other he somehow owed her and wasn’t doing enough. The sentiment couldn’t have been more wrong, though; Jean had never felt more appreciated than she did from Logan, and in truth, _she_ was the one who should be doing more for _him._ If he’d throw his life away without hesitating for the sake of protecting her, believed she was the only light in a world of darkness, she should at least do everything she could to earn that intense and unconditional love.

Jean turned off the light and lay down, closing her eyes to focus. A beam of blue light. It materialized in her mind’s eye, channeling her conscious mind, and she prepared to do a psychic probe. As long as Logan was within a few miles, she should be able to find him, even with the job made tougher by his metal-wrapped skull. She could stretch further, but risked losing control over Phoenix if she did, so that could only be a last resort.

Jean searched thoroughly for almost twenty minutes, detecting a trace in a salvage yard indicating he _had_ been there at one point, but it almost seemed that Logan had up and vanished off the face of the earth. That by itself was bad enough, but even more disturbing was when she picked up Creed nearby. Apparently he _had_ escaped The Vault again to track his… cousin? Younger brother?

She forced her way into his ugly mind: _*Where’s Logan?*_

Creed crumpled to his knees with a grunt of pain, blood leaking from his ears before his healing fixed it. _Came back for more, frail? Didn’t think you’d risk lookin’ in my head._

_*Answer my question before I rearrange your consciousness.*_

_I ain’t sure where Jimmy got hauled off to, girly, but it ain’t anyplace nice… ’bout twenty other scents here, all the same gun oil an’ leather combat boots. Gonna find him, though… nobody kills him but me._

_*How did you escape from SHIELD again so quickly?*_ The question wouldn’t leave her alone.

_They ain’t too bright. Not gonna tell you, neither._

Jean hadn’t counted on him admitting anything in the first place, so that didn’t surprise her any. _*Alright, so what do you want with Logan?*_

_He never told you, girly? Jimmy’s my baby brother… an’ brothers look out for each other. That’s why ain’t nobody gonna kill him but me._

She very suddenly realized a large piece of the puzzle with Creed had fallen into place. Everything Logan had said to him in The Vault was true, but part of the reason he hated his life so much was because of his brother. Creed still remembered everything, them growing up together, sticking with each other in the army. He loved Logan the way you only could love family, and it hurt that Logan didn’t recognize him at all anymore. Even worse, Logan had a deep loathing for Creed after the incident in the forest, which drove the pain even deeper.

_*If you really love your brother, you wouldn’t be trying to murder him.*_

_Ah, fuck you, frail. You don’t fuckin’ get it._

_*I can hear everything in your mind, Creed. You can’t lie to me.*_

_That so?_ He was finally up and moving again, trying to catch Logan’s scent and track it. _Then you know I ain’t yankin’ your chain when I say you don’t got a chance in hell’a findin’ him without me. They got labs all over the place, an’ they ain’t easy to find, neither._

_*Then why would you say anything? Clearly you have the advantage.*_

_’Cause I’mma laugh when I drag him back dead an’ see you cryin’ over him._

_*I'm sure you will, yes.*_ Jean abruptly cut off his conscious self - the entire time they’d been arguing she’d been sending mental cues to Remy and Mystique, who were pulling up to Creed’s position now. She kept him under firm psychic and telekinetic control until he’d been contained in the isolation chamber of the infirmary.

Jean let go of the vicious mutant and snapped back into her own head with a gasp; holding Creed that long and with that intensity was like hanging from a bar with splinters of broken glass in her palms.

 _*Hank?*_ she called out as she left her room on trembling legs and headed for the stairs.

 _I have him,_ the other doctor affirmed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things get VERY dark VERY quickly after this chapter, and if you've read any of my other fics, you know I have no problem getting into the really dark stuff. Consider yourself warned.


	4. Ethical Hell

The first thing he noticed, even before he looked, was the pinch of a needle being slid into his elbow. Eyes snapping open, Logan was so overwhelmed with terror translating into rage that he couldn’t even scream or roar. The sharp tang of industrial cleaning products scoured his nostrils and gave away his location even if he hadn’t been in one of those green-painted rooms made of tile and concrete.

They had him back in the lab.

A worker wearing the types of things he’d seen Hank put on before performing a surgery was sliding the syringe into Logan’s arm, forcing down the plunger to inject a clear substance. It burned his veins, just like the darts they’d subdued him with, and he struggled uselessly to free himself. Metal clamps, probably the same adamantium that coated his skeleton, had been fastened around him at various points to keep him helpless - ankles, wrists, chest, neck. They’d learned from last time, apparently, where he’d managed to dislocate virtually every bone in his hands and feet in order to get free and butcher his way through the bunker until Jean had found him.

A door banged open outside of his limited view: “Ah, welcome back, Wolverine. I always knew we’d bring you home, though it did take almost a year to recover you. Impressive. There must have been a place you used to hide from us, then?”

Even if he’d wanted to answer, he found that he couldn’t. The thick, inflexible band pinning his neck was so tight he could barely breathe, much less speak. But he wouldn’t have told them anything as it was. He wasn’t really sure anymore, but Logan thought he remembered that when he’d been taken prisoner the first time it took more than a year for them to break him. For a while after that, while he still thought he was a human being, he’d begged for mercy and then for death, until eventually he couldn’t talk at all anymore. Until there was nothing left but pieces buried by the Wolverine, and hadn’t been dug up until Jean and the X-Men had found him.

_Jean…_

No. Logan couldn’t think about her right now; that would only make it easier for them to break him. It wouldn’t help anyway; odds weren’t in favor of him seeing her again. Even if he did, it would probably be long after he’d been obliterated for a second time and all that was left was the Wolverine.

A choked grunt escaped his throat as a surgical scalpel was suddenly dragged along the length of his arm. Logan smelled his blood welling from the laceration, all salt and heat, the scent of hurt. It would fill back in after a couple of moments, though, as if it had never been there.

Except…

Except…

_Fuck._

Except that it didn’t this time.

“How long have we been timing?”

“Twenty-seven seconds, doctor.”

“Excellent. Record no signs of accelerated coagulation at the thirty-second mark. Beautiful… the testing prior to Weapon X’s escape was entirely unsuccessful, but we may have finally found the channel to chemical homeostasis regulation.”

“Forty-five seconds.”

“Its pain tolerance threshold remains high, but should the test prove fully successful to the two-minute mark, we will have the means to completely mitigate its healing factor. Eventually with a modified formula, we may also achieve the ability to shut down its resistance to physical pain and even induce it at will. This would dramatically increase our capacity to control Weapon X’s combat and motor functions through negative reinforcement.”

“This is all interesting, Dr. Cornelius, but it doesn’t change the basic fact that he’s managed to revert to the mental state he had when we first recruited him for Weapons Plus. An equal or greater portion of your time _will_ be spent on psychological conditioning until I have my weapon back. Even the Wolverine remaining is too much, leaves him with too much control. Fix it.”

“Colonel-”

“Excuses are like assholes, doctor. I expect progress updates at the end of each day on the conditioning.”

“Colonel Stryker, I-”

“Excuses. Assholes. _Fix him._ ” 

* * *

 

Jean and Hank were almost literally holding their breaths as Sabertooth regained consciousness in the isolation cell. The vicious feral sat up and glanced around, then located the camera and leered at them through it.

[Know you’re watchin’ me, girly. Not takin’ chances on Jimmy’s life, huh? How fuckin’ noble. You ain’t gonna save him, though. Could’a just let me give him a short end, an’ now they’re gonna make him suffer. Ain’t gonna be nothin’ left’a him by the end’a the week…]

“We’re going to find him, Mr. Creed. And you’re going to help us,” Jean informed him through the audio feed. “You can either choose to do it yourself, or we’ll give you a little help.”

“Charles wouldn’t-”

“He’s not here, Hank,” Jean snapped at her friend, not in any mood for delays. Every passing second was that much more Logan would suffer and she knew it. She shook her head: “Besides, Creed obviously has something going on that’s keeping him from behaving the way he actually wants to. If he thought it would redeem him, he’d jump to rescue Logan in a second.”

“Do we have time for diagnostics? Only a short time has passed since you threatened a patient with unethical telepathic scanning in order to save effort.”

“You have no idea what they’re doing to him, but I’ve seen almost every nightmare he’s had because he always projects them as loud as he can. _Logan can’t wait for the nitty-gritty of ethics right now,_ and it’s not unethical to do what we can to save him. We’re not going to do to Creed what they’re doing to Logan, so there’s no comparison. Now either help or stop distracting me.”

Hank sighed, but nodded. “Your emotions are dictating your actions, my dear, but unfortunately it’s correct that Logan can’t afford us to stall.”

They turned back to the screen and opened the audio channel again. “Would you like some help deciding, Mr. Creed?”

[Ah, go fuck yourselves, X-geeks. I ain’t here for your entertainment.]

“This is your final opportunity to volunteer the information before my colleague is forced to psychically probe your memories,” Hank warned.

[Do I get a complimentary blow-job from her after?] Creed sneered.

“That’s what I thought,” Jean muttered to herself in annoyance. “Just be aware, Mr. Creed, that you’ve brought this onto yourself.”

[Ain’t worried ’bout it, frail.]

She sat down to focus and speared her way back into his mind to start searching. An involuntary probe while the recipient was conscious and lucid always brought about pain, but the wild mutant didn’t react physically at all.

The hallmarks of such illegal facilities: the Alkali-Transigen and Essex Corp logos. Certain military bases that had anomalies most ordinary people wouldn’t spot, such as the cooling stacks that were usually on hospitals for MRI scanners or cargo docks for trucks that were laid out in a way that was counter-intuitive. Buildings that claimed to be schools or psychiatric care hospitals, but were in unusual locations for such institutions and often boasting armed guards in heavy ballistic armor.

Because he’d simply handed Logan over to them.

Wait, what?

Jean reached out and caught the thread of sharp guilt: Creed had been in the military’s clutches, threatened by the officer who’d taken the brothers on after their botched execution in ’73. Logan had walked out on them after being ordered to murder an entire village, but Creed had stayed on to feed his ever-growing thirst for carnage. That had been a mistake, because eventually Stryker intended to experiment on Creed. So he’d offered to deliver his brother in exchange for his own freedom.

Logan had managed to escape after the procedure to graft adamantium into his bones in ’79, and evaded them for years until he’d been recaptured in ’03. He’d spent the next 16 years being tortured into oblivion, and now they’d abducted him for a third time after only a few months.

Jean almost felt like she’d been yanked by her hair, thrown back into her own mind and stumbling for a second but ultimately landing on the floor. Hank gave her a concerned look and offered a furry blue hand: “Are you alright?”

“Does it matter?” She regained her balance once upright and then turned back to the camera. Creed was in a heap, having obviously collapsed and aimed for his bed but missed. He was bleeding from his ears and nose, groaning. “It’ll only get worse if you don’t start cooperating, you know.”

Creed just snarled and Jean dove back in.

He’d stuck with Jimmy from the start, running and running and running some more, avoiding any place that had other people for months on end until they were too exhausted and hungry. They never even realized when they’d crossed the border, and none of those people knew they weren’t Americans.

How many wars after that…? He didn’t bother keeping track, but it seemed like all the major ones, anyway. Confederates, then Germans, then more Germans.

Vietnam.

And everything had gone to hell; he’d been losing Jimmy slowly, through all those years and moving to new towns when they looked too young for how old they were supposed to be and all the different last names. In Vietnam, he’d gone back to his original name, but Jimmy had gone with Logan, his real father’s last name instead of Howlett that he’d been born as. And in Vietnam, Corporal Victor Creed and First Sergeant James Logan had finally gotten found out. He almost wished they _had_ died, then, because maybe without Stryker fucking them over, he wouldn’t have lost his younger brother forever-

The force of the anguish really hit Jean and she couldn’t hang on anymore, but at least she didn’t fall down again. Knowing the story was one thing, but witnessing it through someone’s memories was a completely different level that dragged her along for the ride of their suffering.

“Hank,” she whispered, reaching out to the console and flipping the audio off again, “we’ve got to do something about Creed. His healing factor didn’t fix psychological damage any more than Logan’s did.”

“And the months of therapy Logan needed to start behaving like a person…?”

“I know… I might have to risk placing some psychic blocks until we’ve rescued Logan. When we give Creed back to SHIELD we’ll have to make them come up with a more productive solution besides just caging him until he breaks out again. We can’t use Cerebro until the professor gets back from his conference, so we need Sabertooth’s tracking skills to find which bunker Logan’s being held in. There’s too many and they’re too hard to spot for us to split up the team for each lead.”

“And when they immediately attack each other?”

“They won’t.” Jean frowned and shook her head, glancing back at the screen. “Because once he’s found the laboratory, you, Emma and Remy will bring him back here. Creed will never go inside with us.” 

* * *

 

_Jean?_

_Nothing. He hears nothing… where is she? Where’s Jeannie? Usually she sleeps in his arms…_

_Baby, you there? Don’t hear nothin’ an’ I don’t see nothin’, neither… can’t find you. Where’d you go?_

Logan awoke with a jolt, reflexively trying to sit up in bed and crushing his throat into the metal clamp. Fuck, _fuck,_ he forgot where he was. They had him. No wonder he couldn’t find his girlfriend, she was nowhere near him. She couldn’t hear him crying out in his sleep and she wasn’t going to snuggle up so he could calm down from his nightmares.

Because now the nightmares were real again.

_Knew this would happen, though… fuck, knew they’d get me again an’ I still let my fuckin’ guard down anyway. The fuck's wrong with me? Don’t got nobody to blame but yourself, bub. Should’a paid better attention an’ now you’re gonna die down here… not really die, I guess, but the “me” part ain’t gonna be there no more. Fuck, I need that… don’t wanna see all’a this again. Jeannie ain’t comin’ this time. A’ready be gone by the time she gets here, if she even finds this place…_

Logan twisted and wrenched pointlessly against the restraints until his skin started to rub off under them. Oh, perfect, their anti-healing thing hadn’t worn off yet. So all he’d done was made it worse for himself. He had no means of showing defiance, now, because even his useless thrashing only served to strip him down even more.

**_Weak animal._ **

And now Wolverine was back, too. Clearly nothing was off limits in hell anymore, not that there had been many the last time.

**_Weak animal, but I can save us._ **

_Fuck you. You ain’t even really there an’ there ain’t nothin’ you can change ’bout this. You ain’t savin’ us, bub. Just makin’ it more painful for me before I bite it._

**_Bite nothing. I can save us._ **

_Stupid stubborn fuck. Remember before? Fuckin’ screamin’ on the table under their knives, beggin’ for it to stop or for my mother or for water or for death an’ gettin’ none’a it. Just laughin’ at me when I fuckin’ broke. Just go away. Don’t need your fuckin’ noise. Gonna go back to sleep, dream ’bout Jeannie until they come for me again. Not even gonna fight. Just let them end me, ’cause I can’t do none’a that all again…_

**_I. Can. Save. Us._ **

_Bull-fuckin’-shit._

**_Weak animal. Just hide, while I fight them. Weak animal hiding behind me. But I can save us…_ **

And then Logan understood.

* * *

  

Scott was beyond annoyed with this situation, because of course he was. Jean didn’t care. The team leader could bitch and moan about it as much as he wanted, whether from trying to stay awake and alert while sitting and waiting in full mission garb on the jet at 2:45 in the morning or because Logan had been “hanging around for almost a year taking advantage and contributing nothing” (except for _all those cars_ he’d fixed for them, as well as single-handedly catching Sabertooth on the grounds of the mansion).

But that was immaterial, and everyone knew it; his only sympathizer was Emma, and she wasn’t even there. She, Remy and Hank were following Sabertooth from a vehicle exactly in line with Jean’s plan.

Logan being her boyfriend notwithstanding, she wasn’t going to sit on her hands waiting for a full reconnoiter and information gathering while an innocent human being, still sick and damaged from his previous stint in captivity, was held and tortured for experiments so immoral even the Nazis might have frowned on them. Really, Scott was aware of this too, and Jean knew it. But Scott was also not Logan’s biggest fan, so there’d be no end of the complaining until they were actually breaching the facility. But almost everyone else was silent with apprehension, including the junior team when they usually talked the most.

Logan was one of those people whose personality meant you either loved him or hated him with no in-between, but despite his mental health problems and utter lack of social skills most of the X-Men recognized the value of his brutal honesty and the way he always just got to the point without any fluff or time-wasting. Doing everything in the most ham-fisted way possible certainly didn’t work in every scenario, but more often than not situations arose that called for it, and once he’d recovered Logan would’ve made an excellent addition to the team.

Jean closed her eyes and reached out again, but Creed was already at the very edge of her senses and was clearly not slowing down. She’d seen him during his rampages before, leaping along the ground like the large feline he’d taken his nickname from, but even now was surprised by how fast he could be on all fours. He used the claws in his fingertips to catch the ground and throw his weight forward for longer bounds, then pushed off with his feet to land on his palms again.

Even more shocking was finding herself silently egging him on, even though she made sure she wasn’t projecting. Creed was just lucid enough in his brutality to be considered evil instead of an actual psychopath, and Jean definitely hadn’t forgotten what he’d done to her, but now he was the only chance they’d have to find Logan. And after she’d been in his mind, realized that his cruelty was from the pain of losing his only family and having failed to overcome the bloodlust that drove him to this madness, she couldn’t help but pity him.

[We’re approaching the state line with Pennsylvania,] Emma reported over the comm. [Creed’s pace is slowing and he’s behaving excitably. He says we’re within three kilometers of the installation, so you should rendezvous with us there.]

Using the GPS beacons in their comms, the jet touched down under cover of a rainy and foggy night courtesy of Ororo. Emma was already telekinetically restraining Creed in the vehicle the three X-Men had followed him in while Scott received a brief report in the third-person from Remy. Jean was only half listening, though, because it was just the “Sabertooth behaved himself and we didn’t have any problems getting here” speech.

Logan was within reach. Despite whatever these scientists had come up with to shield their activities from telepaths, the very beginning of a headache was already creeping through her forehead from the pain radiating out of his mind. They certainly hadn’t wasted any time, had they?

Unfortunately, given that they hadn’t even known what kind of building it would be until they’d actually gotten there, Scott was forced to improvise what positions they were taking.

“We’ll run this in pairs. Gambit, change of plans, you’ll have to stay with us while White Queen and Beast transport Sabertooth. Nightcrawler, you and Gambit will take the east perimeter. Mystique, you’ll be with me on the south perimeter. Storm, Phoenix, you’re at the north perimeter. Shadowcat, Pyro, Colossus, Rogue, you’ll have the west perimeter. It was clear when we arrived, so you just need to make sure it stays clear. Iceman, Jubilee, remain here with the jet and maintain surveillance as much as you can. Once the exterior is secure, Storm and Nightcrawler will hold position along the facility with Pyro and Colossus. Shadowcat and Gambit will try to recover electronic records so that we can find and disable the other research locations at a later time. Rogue, you’ll join me, Phoenix and Mystique to extract Wolverine. We don’t know what this laboratory’s technological capabilities are, so maintain comm silence unless you have no choice. Whoever recovers Wolverine first, key your comm twice to signal, but don’t announce anything. We’ll know to return to the jet if you do. Understood?”

The other 11 X-Men all nodded quietly in affirmation.

 _Hold on, Logan,_ Jean thought even though she wasn’t projecting. There was no way for her to know where he was and send a private message. _We’re coming._


	5. Twenty-Two Claws

Jean used her telekinesis to pick the various locks and to disable the electronic sensors on the exterior door. It looked like a normal entrance from the outside, but the door ended up being much heavier than it appeared and it must’ve been lined with whatever psychic dampener they hid their inner labs with, because once it had been opened she was hit with a sudden headache. Jean felt like a hand grenade had exploded behind her eyes.

“What’s wrong?” Rogue asked when Jean leaned against the wall, grabbing her temples.

“It’s not just him in there,” she ground out, struggling to gather her focus so she could block herself off from the screaming minds. Actually, she noticed as she pushed them back one by one, the majority were children under 15, and Logan was nowhere to be found. “There’s kids in this facility.”

Jean forced herself not to panic at the fact that she couldn’t feel her boyfriend being tortured anymore; granted, not that she _wanted_ Logan to be in pain, but picking up on it was a definite indicator that he was still al-conscious. He’d be unconscious right now, which meant recovering him could be sticky given the situation and his tendency to bolt awake at midnight trying to stab the air to death.

“There’s two guards approaching from the right hall,” Jean warned them, pointing. She knocked them unconscious with a thought, which enabled them to secure the soldiers and recover their key-cards.

“What if we need codes, too?” Rogue questioned; there were only two cards, so Jean and Scott had taken custody of them.

“I can disable them in a pinch, and so can Scott, but only if we have to,” she explained as the four of them began moving again. “We don’t know what type of security measures they’ll have or how many guards are here, so we can’t give ourselves away if we can help it.”

A deliberate mental shout brushed Jean’s mind, and she opened up just a little so that Kitty could pass along information without risking the comm.

 _Dr. Grey, the bottom floor is all empty except for guards. It’s the area they run most of the experiments in and mix chemicals, so all the prisoners are on the other three floors. Logan’s up on the fourth floor, but he’s the only one. They’ve got separate operating rooms for him and everything. And… did you know there’s a bunch of kids here? But they weren’t captured, they were… um…_ grown _here in this lab._

 _*I see.*_ Jean frowned with worry as she took in this information. They’d upped their secure holding on Logan since his escape in early February, and in the five or six hours since they’d taken him who knew how much they’d done to him already. _*Can you see him?*_

_I’m still breaching their admin permissions so I can download the data, Remy’s working on the camera feed but he’s not there yet. I’ll let you know when we’re through._

What Kitty said next made Jean’s blood freeze, and after she’d passed the information along to Scott he decided she and Rogue should go investigate it while he and Mystique continued to systematically incapacitate the soldiers; even without her telepathy, they were the two most senior X-Men besides Xavier himself, so they could more than handle it.

_Are we going to get Logan after this?_

The question wasn’t especially surprising. Rogue had spent some amount of time in a similar lab, so Logan was really the only one who understood her and they shared a special sort of bond. Jean wasn’t worried about it at all, though. She knew her boyfriend’s feelings towards Rogue were an extension of his wolflike perception that the mutants who lived in the school were his “pack,” and that if most of them were extended relatives, then Rogue would be Logan’s niece or younger sister or something.

 _*We’re going to try,*_ Jean answered. _*Most of these kids aren’t going anywhere, but I can’t sense anything from him anymore. He’s either unconscious or they’ve deliberately put him under for some reason.*_

_But what if he-_

_*He’s unconscious,*_ she insisted firmly, refusing to entertain the thought even though she knew exactly what Rogue had been about to say.

The pair moved cautiously up the hall. Jean could trick the soldiers’ minds into not seeing them, which was what she planned on doing since they couldn’t safely contain the unconscious ones on their own, but it was still better if they didn’t run into any at all. She just needed to focus; they’d find Logan immediately after this, but first they needed to get to the third floor, and before they got to the third floor they needed to reach the stairs.

Moving deeper into the facility, they passed several lab rooms that exactly matched Kitty’s description. Small operating rooms separated by a cleanroom from the hall, though the large windows enabled Jean to see into them. None were in use, thankfully, but the lights were on in all of them for some reason. Maybe they were never off, she decided, in case one of the prisoners tried to hide in them.

Disturbingly, some of the machines and procedural tools she saw set up inside suggested that experiments and at least one autopsy were scheduled for the morning. The equipment Jean and Hank used in their infirmary at the school was state-of-the-art, more advanced than all but the most prestigious hospitals, but this was military hardware. She wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d had time to take a closer look and determined the machines and instruments were specially crafted just for this lab.

“What are those?” Rogue whispered, pointing through another set of windows.

Jean paused to look - it wasn’t another set of sterile rooms, but rather obviously an OB/GYN setup, though it was missing any of the “comfort” elements hospitals and clinics normally afforded such areas. A table with the stirrups, an instrument cart, and a holding basket for the infant in question. No blankets or pillows, and Jean didn’t want to think about what happened to the women after the fact. (Really, though, she already knew.)

Jean and Rogue hugged the wall as three soldiers passed, equipment rattling on their armored bodies and heavy boots clomping on the tile floor. She hid them from the trio and sent a psychic warning to Scott and Mystique, then looked down the side of the junction the soldiers had come from.

There! The stairs were in sight.

 _This feels like one of those shooting games that John and Bobby like to play,_ Rogue commented. _Except we don’t have guns like they do._

_*We also don’t get to start over if something goes wrong, Rogue. Please pay attention to the mission.*_

Jean’s first impulse was to let anxiety over her boyfriend get the better of her and snap at her former student, but she kept herself under control. It wasn’t Rogue’s fault that Logan had been caught.

_I’m sorry._

_*Don’t be, just try to stay focused.*_ A small glimmer in the corner of her mind, suddenly - it was hazy with a trace of fear, but mostly just in mind-numbing agony. _*Logan? Logan, can you hear me?*_

_Hurts…_

_*I know, baby, I know it hurts, but just hang on for me, okay? We’re coming, I promise…*_

_Can’t… they gonna… again… hurts… fuck…_

Logan wasn’t lucid, that much was clear, but just knowing he was alive and conscious was a massive relief. Jean already knew that once this was over and he was back home safe with them, she’d end up sitting on her bed and having a good cry that this had happened to him again. But at least he was alive. She hadn’t let herself finish the thought that he might not be, but the sick churning in her stomach knew it had been possible.

 _*Logan’s awake, I can hear him,*_ Jean informed Rogue.

_What’s happening to him right now?_

The pair began slipping quietly up the stairs, noting a lone soldier bolting down to the first floor that she easily hid them from. Jean sent another warning to Scott before answering the question.

 _*He’s delirious right now, they’ve done something to him and he’s in a lot of pain. I don’t think it’s anything he can’t recover from, though.*_ She switched her attention back to her boyfriend. _*Logan, can you still hear me? Do you remember my name?*_

_Hear you… Jeannie… JEAN! Oh, fuck, they got you too, fuck, I gotta… fuck… where’re you? They’re gonna… fuck… oh, no…_

_*It’s okay, it’s okay,*_ Jean tried to explain desperately. _*Logan, they didn’t capture me, I’m here with the team. We’re going to get you out of here, we’re on our way up to you right now. I know you’re in a lot of pain, and I know you’re really scared, but you need to just focus on my voice, okay? Just focus on my voice. We’re on our way and we’re going to get you back home.*_

 _I’mma… I…_ He was losing his concentration again, and that wouldn’t be good. If Logan panicked, it could blow their cover, and as far as Jean knew the soldiers still didn’t _really_ know they were there and were only responding to an alarm. _Jeannie… can’t move, I can’t… fuckin’ hurts… ain’t healin’... fuck…_

 _*Logan, Logan, listen to me, okay? You need to just listen to me, listen to my voice, baby. We’re on the second floor right now, okay? You’re up on the fourth floor, we’re just two floors down from you. We’re on our way_ right now, _I promise. Once we get you out of here it won’t hurt anymore. The pain won’t be there for much longer.*_

_I ain’t healin’... did somethin’ to me… dunno… Jeannie… I… my skin… blood… fuck, fuck, it hurts, fuckin’ hurts… ain’t never hurt like this… fuck…_

The second flight of stairs was on the opposite end of the hall. There was a cluster of five soldiers all shouting at each other, but between making their eyes lie to them and trying to keep Logan calm Jean didn’t process a word of it. She sent one more in a series of “heads up”s to Scott about them, then the pair slipped by in careful silence. By they time they were climbing the stairs, Logan had stopped thinking at all and in Jean’s mind his entire being was hot with the blue-white of excruciating injury. The only emotion he had left was walking the fine line between crippling fear and blinding rage, both feeding into each other alongside the scents and sounds of his nightmares.

_*Logan, hey, say something, keep talking to me. It’ll help if you keep talking.*_

_Jeannie…_

_*Logan?*_

She felt him lose consciousness after that, right at the moment that Kitty was trying to reach her again.

_Are you on the third floor yet?_

_*Yes, are you sure this is where they are? Most of these rooms look empty.*_

_They’re definitely there. Try the one on your left once you’re past the T-junction._

Jean obeyed, telekinetically opening it since this door _did_ require a number code to unlock otherwise. There was a small space like a buffer and then an inner door, much thicker and obviously meant to contain whatever was put inside of it. But that was probably a good thing in this case, she decided. Rogue waited in the area between the two doors and Jean entered the room alone.

Immediately they panicked when they saw her - a boy and a girl crouched into attack postures, no older than 11, and there was no way she could mistake them. The boy had a wide face, steely gray eyes, and was hissing through jagged fangs with metal talons hooking out from his fingertips. His expression held fear and violence, but a small part of him obviously enjoyed that violence. The girl, on the other hand, didn’t have fangs and was leaner. Her eyes were hazel, and she sported six sharp metal blades - two in each hand and one in each foot. The girl’s snarl was indicative of absolute rage that this had been done to her, blocking out all pain or fear she might otherwise have had. Kitty hadn’t been wrong - the children in this lab had been grown from various DNA samples of mutants, which meant that the boy was Victor’s son and the girl was Logan’s daughter.

Jean was very careful not to approach them. She held out her hands with the palms up and open, the same way she’d done during Logan’s rescue more than half a year ago. They were sniffing, now, the boy already relaxing slightly. The girl was somewhat more suspicious, marching boldly up to Jean and smelling her fingers. Neither of the kids retracted their claws, though they’d stopped growling and the two blades slid back up into the girl’s bare feet. They grabbed each other’s hands immediately; it would’ve been endearing in any other circumstances, but she could tell that it was because they’d been together in this room all their lives and thought they had nobody else.

“It’s okay,” Jean offered, projecting calmness. “I’m here with some friends of mine, and we’re going to take you someplace safe, alright? Can you tell me your names?”

The pair shared a look for a second, then reached down into their patient gowns and pulled out metal dog-tags on ball chains identical to the ones that Creed and Logan wore. Jean took them in her hands: **X-23** and **X-57**. They didn’t have names, or even nicknames. To the people here, these were just _things,_ the means to an end, and it was disgusting.

“Okay…” she sighed, gently slipping the tags back into the hospital gowns and brushing the kids’ hands to comfort them. “My name is Jean Grey, I’m going to help you get out of here, alright? You’ll be safe after that and you won’t have to come back here ever again.”

They both sniffed her again, exchanged a second glance, and then nodded. Jean smiled and opened the door, sending telepathic directions to Rogue and then to Bobby and Jubilee. There’d be blankets waiting for the kids in the jet, and Jubilee could keep monitoring while Bobby’s mellow personality would most likely help the kids start to trust them.

But Jean and Rogue had to get them out of the building first, and that plan was almost instantly botched.

She’d been banking on simply hiding the four of them the way she’d done before, but hadn’t explained that to the pair… not that it would’ve necessarily changed the outcome. As soon as three soldiers were within view, the boy and the girl both charged forward, roaring like their fathers would and tearing their captors to shreds long after the men had stopped moving.

 _*Scott, Mystique, we have a situation,*_ Jean reached out. _*We need to get the rest of the kids out, they’re going to know for sure what’s going on now.*_

_Understood. We’ve cleared the first floor and we’re sweeping the second floor now, so once you get those two back to the jet you can immediately move to secure Logan. Kitty and Remy have finished with the electronic records, so I’ll have them evacuate the rest of the prisoners._

Jean relayed the message and the new orders to the rest of the team while she led the 11-year-olds out of the building. They were still gripping each other’s hands, but out of… _excitement?_ Of course, she realized sadly, they’d never been outside. They wanted to see what was waiting for them. Well, after the mission and she was done crying for Logan, she’d probably spend the whole next day crying for these kids, too. She hated that people like this existed, who tortured innocent human beings while claiming it as research. They might as well be wearing red armbands and goose-stepping as far as she was concerned, but even that wasn’t the worst. The part that made her hurt for them most was that she knew she’d be the only one crying for them, because there was nobody else.

 _Not now, though,_ Jean told herself forcefully, regaining control as the corners of her eyes almost started stinging. _Once we get back._

“Hey, there,” Bobby smiled, kneeling and holding out his hands when the young pair were climbing the ramp. The frozen X-Man was such a laid-back and friendly person, and it showed. The kids instantly relaxed a little and even nodded at him in greeting. “I’m Bobby, one of Jean’s friends. I’m going to have you sit down and drink something so that you can warm up, alright?”

Once safely under Bobby’s care, Jean and Rogue almost sprinted back to the facility. They needed to get Logan out, _now._

Inside, Scott and Mystique were starting in on the third floor while Remy and Kitty were leading about twelve young mutants back out. The oldest one was maybe 16 or 17 years old, but the rest were younger, either just starting puberty now or on the verge of doing so. Jean managed a brief smile of gratitude to Kitty as she and Rogue rushed by, then flung a soldier into a wall as they made for the stairs.

The fourth floor was the scariest-looking. It was all lit in green for some reason, with reinforced plate glass in the windows and walls that were probably covered in adamantium so that Logan couldn’t cut through them. Glances through said windows, even though she was in a hurry, showed her various procedure rooms with any number of tools and machines as well as carts of electronic gadgets that would undoubtedly have been planned as implants for his body.

Between the windows and the massive airlock at the very end of the hall, there was no need to search for him room-by-room. Jean knocked two more guards unconscious without even looking at them, then focused hard on her telekinesis and ripped the reinforced door right off its hinges, taking most of the frame with it. A second and third inner door later, and she was beside a metal table where her boyfriend had been restrained.

 _*Logan.*_ Jean psychically reached into his mind. _*Logan, we’re here, we’re going to get you out, but you need to wake up.*_

“Ughn…” he moaned, twitching against the clamps.

She forced them open with her telekinesis, eyes widening in horror now that she could actually see his injuries. They’d done something to him to counteract his healing factor, apparently, because his shirts had been cut off his body and he was covered in lacerations that hadn’t sealed themselves. They’d obviously been inflicted with a surgical scalpel and weren’t even stitched, two on his chest still leaking drops of blood.

Logan breathed in and tried to get up, but wasn’t conscious or lucid enough to do so and ended up dropping to the floor off the edge of the table. He was in considerable pain, obviously, which also didn’t help as he _almost_ got up before his hands slipped out from under him. His arms wouldn’t support his weight.

 _It’s the adamantium,_ Jean realized. _It’s poisoning him. He won’t recover until the drugs finally wear off…_

“We need to go,” Rogue suddenly insisted.

Jean didn’t turn to look. “I know, hang on.”

“No, really, we need to go _now._ ”

She glanced over her shoulder and froze - five soldiers were clomping towards them up the hall. They needed to get Logan away.

“Come on, get up,” Jean urged, hooking her arms under her boyfriend’s and lifting with all her strength.

She couldn’t have done it by herself, but he was making a genuine effort now and finally climbed to his feet. Once he was up, he grabbed the edge of the table to try and regain his balance, but then raised his head and his whole body tensed with fear as he spotted the soldiers. The idea flashed through his mind almost faster than Jean could recognize it, and right as she opened her mouth to scream for him not to do it, Logan was already pressing his knuckles into his ribs and spearing himself with his own claws.


	6. Tagged In A Pack Through Blood

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Be warned, dark stuff in this chapter. Because Victor is in it, and he's just disturbing because he feels like being disturbing. Things get bad for Logan very quickly, so...

Jean whipped back around and blasted the soldiers with her telekinesis, so hard that she felt their brains hemorrhaging almost instantly. It would kill them, and SHIELD had said they’d have these people tried and imprisoned, so she was supposed to leave them alive. But in that moment, she was so panicked that she didn’t care.

“Logan, Logan, look at me, Logan, _look at me,_ ” Jean yelled at him, dropping to her knees on the floor and pressing her hands to the gaping wounds in his chest.

His eyes were rolling back as he spasmed and coughed blood, and she could tell that even though he hadn’t punctured his heart he’d still gotten both of his lungs and at least one major artery. He’d bleed to death in less than ten minutes.

“Rogue, I need you to help me. Press your hands as hard as you can onto his ribs like this.”

Jean held her former student’s palms to Logan’s injuries, instantly soaking the gloves in blood, then turned back to the doorway. There were about ten different ORs in this building; between them she was bound to find what she’d need. Jean wasn’t a surgeon by nature, it wasn’t her specialty, and despite being a doctor the idea of deliberately sticking her hands into a patient’s body had always been unnerving. But Logan couldn’t wait, so she’d have to improvise and perform an emergency procedure just to get him back home alive.

Broadcasting everything to Scott, Jean ran into the nearest OR and threw scrubs and a gown over her X-Men uniform. A haphazard hand-washing and she levitated Logan, still twitching, through the sub-sterile clean room and onto the procedure table. Rogue followed uncertainly, also donning scrubs. Jean yanked on a pair of sterile gloves after tying a gauze mask over the lower half of her face, not bothering with eyewear or covering her combat boots. Her hair was up anyway, so she told Rogue to gear up the same way and they both went into the room.

Logan’s blood was already soaking through the white linens on the table, dripping in thin streams to the blue rubber floor. Jean didn’t waste time running around, but rather pulled over instrument carts and several other tools for the procedure with a few jabs of her finger. She injected him with a hemostatic and telepathically blocked his mind from regaining consciousness, then reached for a scalpel… and realized his ribs were made of adamantium. There was no way she would be able to spread them.

No laparoscopic tools, either. “Go find one of these,” Jean ordered, inserting an image into Rogue’s mind.

In the meantime, she used her telekinesis to stem the flow of blood as best she could, holding the edges of the inner wounds together, which bought her time to place a saline drip. But she couldn’t just keep him like that all the way back to the mansion; she didn’t have the stamina to maintain it that long, and it also wasn’t totally effective as some amount of blood was still escaping. He was struggling to breathe, too, because even though she was holding the punctures closed his lungs had a significant amount of blood in them.

It took ten minutes just for Rogue to return with an instrument pack, which she handed over without a word. Jean wasted no time tearing it open, then booted up one of the monitors and plugged the scope into it. Logan’s skin was alarmingly pale by then, and even without her mental block he probably wouldn’t have been conscious anyway. His pulse was rapid but dangerously weak, even with the fluid line, which meant that if he survived the operation he’d need a transfusion.

“Okay,” Jean muttered to herself through her pale green procedure mask. She tentatively slit one of the puncture wounds further open with the scalpel, then threaded the scope in and prepared a suture. Her hands wouldn’t fit, but at least with the scope she could see what she was doing, so she used her powers to carefully stitch the laceration to his aorta. “Okay. Rogue, hand me that packet of sterile gauze.”

It was pressed into her hand and she wiped blood from the punctures inside his right lung, then lifted it back out and dropped it over the side of the table without even touching it. The next six sutures repaired the lung, but they were slightly less tidy than the one in his aorta. Logan’s life would be measured in minutes if she didn’t get a move on, so she was forced to do them two at a time.

After relocating the scope again, Jean began the stitching of his left lung as fast as she dared. There was no way she’d have managed this without her telekinesis, and later when she’d had time to think about it she’d be very grateful for all the tedious practice she’d done with her powers as a teenager that gave her such control.

Once all Logan’s inner wounds had been closed, Jean slapped adhesive bandages over his skin and lifted him from the table. Scott was waiting outside to tell her they’d taken care of the soldiers and handed them off to SHIELD, so without bothering to remove her “borrowed” attire Jean rushed Logan outside to the jet. There was a small section in the very back for injuries, but it only had basic emergency supplies when what Logan needed now was acute intensive care.

“What happened?” Ororo exclaimed as Jean was settling him onto the narrow surface.

“He wasn’t lucid when we were trying to recover him. Some of the guards were in the hall and that made him panic. Logan did this to himself,” she answered flatly, reaching for his wrist to check his pulse again. With the fluid line and the hemostatics, it was a little better for the moment, but Logan was still far from being out of danger. “We would’ve been back sooner but he needed emergency surgery.”

“Why isn’t he healing?”

“They injected him with some kind of drug. Until it wears off on its own, his healing factor is completely negated. He won’t recover any faster than a normal human.”

 _If he does at all,_ her mind whispered, but she didn’t say it. The truth of the matter was that between his body going into shock from the injuries and the volume of blood he’d lost, it was more than likely that Logan would succumb to his wounds before they reached the mansion or immediately afterwards.

Jean’s mind turned back to the issue of his hypovolemia; being a mutant, Logan’s blood wasn’t normal anyway, but given that it was the AB group it would be even more difficult to successfully transfuse him. The only guaranteed shot she’d have would be to take some from his brother, and it was unlikely Creed would be feeling particularly cooperative.

Logan started seizing.

“Scott, hurry!” Jean barked over her shoulder, scooping up the pillow from where it had been knocked to the floor and sliding it under his head. Tonic-clonic seizures were a very bad sign; the dangerous blood loss from when Logan had been hemorrhaging caused severe hypotension, which meant nowhere near enough oxygen was being circulated to his brain. Assuming he made it back in time for a transfusion (which was looking less and less likely by the minute), he could be comatose for weeks or even years if his brain was suffocated for long enough. He might not wake up at all.

Jean hoped to God it didn’t come to that. She’d much rather have him die in the next few minutes like this than have to monitor him for an extended period, waiting and hoping for something that might never come. Logan probably wouldn’t want that, either, and she knew it.

The seizure was brief, and about twenty minutes after it ended they were finally descending into the hangar under the basketball court. They let Jean out first, floating Logan down the ramp and into medical. A series of voice commands and the various life-support machines raised out of the floor tiles around the bed she’d placed him on, and after fixing a fresh saline drip for him she immediately put him on oxygen. Cranking the flow up to four liters per minute, Jean had placed the EKG leads and was slipping on the pulse oximeter when his vitals went flat.

Jean struggled to control her panic when the monitor began flashing and sounding an alarm. Pushing both hands on his sternum did nothing; his body was inflexible except by its own volition, which meant she needed to use her telekinesis _again_ to force his lungs and heart to keep working while she prepped an injection of epinephrine. Plunging it through his skin, her hold on his internal organs meant she felt the slight jolt to his endocrine receptors. Though weak, his heartbeat continued on its own after that, but his lungs weren’t on the same page and she ended up intubating him for a ventilator.

Jean was beyond exhausted. The almost constant use of her powers, to say nothing of the fight to keep her boyfriend alive, was massively draining and she hadn’t slept at all since before he’d been captured. But that meant nothing. Hank and Creed weren’t back yet, and she needed both of them if she was going to save Logan. And she couldn’t save Logan if she was off sleeping.

In the meantime, Jean peeled back the hastily-applied adhesive dressings and saw that, unsurprisingly, his skin was still oozing blood and needed stitches. Now that she had the time to worry about that, she retrieved a suture kit and mopped the blood off his skin. Given that Logan’s claws were absurdly sharp, four of the lacerations were small and it didn’t take long to patch them. The ones she’d been forced to cut further were actually more annoying, not just from being longer and held open for the scope, but because the scalpel wasn’t as sharp as the claws and by comparison had made almost jagged incisions.

As Jean was laying the final strip of tegaderm film over the stitches to keep them from tearing before the wounds had healed, the doors to the infirmary opened behind her with a hiss and she turned to see Hank and Emma herding a very cranky Sabertooth back into the isolation cell.

“What happened?” Hank immediately asked, coming over.

Jean gave him the abbreviated explanation. “We need to give him a transfusion. I’ve already had to resuscitate him once and shortly before we returned his hypotension caused a tonic-clonic seizure. The only way to be certain a transfusion won’t result in adverse effects is if we draw from Creed.”

“We have a store of O-neg,” Hank pointed out, frowning slightly.

“I know, but with his healing factor down and the extent of his injuries I don’t know if that would be enough. We still don’t have a full understanding of Logan’s mutation and it could be a risk.”

“Alright.” Hank nodded and the pair ventured into the isolation cell, where Emma was still holding him immobile. “Mr. Creed, I’m certain you overheard.”

“No blood for you, furball,” Sabertooth sneered. “I ain’t interested in you keepin’ it.”

“We wouldn’t keep it. We need it for your brother, he’s dying. Unless you help him, he’ll be gone in less than two hours.”

Creed’s face twisted into an unreadable expression and his gray eyes fixed on Jean, causing her to stiffen with fear.

“Only if _she_ does it,” the ferocious mutant leered, flashing his long incisors.

Jean felt like all the air had been squeezed out of her lungs. She’d managed to keep herself from dwelling too much on what he’d done, but this was...

 _Logan’s love and support is what helped you get over it,_ her thoughts reminded her. _It’s just drawing blood, and it will save him._

Forcing herself to take a breath without shaking, Jean nodded and left to gather the few supplies she’d need. She was doing this for her boyfriend, she repeated mentally. _It’s not a big deal. Hank and Emma will stop him if he tries anything._

Once back in the isolation cell, every step was a battle not to seize with fear. A quick swipe of the alcohol pad into Creed’s elbow, uncap the butterfly needle. _See, not so hard,_ Jean kept saying in her head. _It’s not so hard, and it’ll save Logan._

After securing the plastic tube with micropore tape, she opened the tiny valve and Creed’s blood was immediately dribbling into the bag. Noticing this must’ve made Jean linger for a second too long, though, because suddenly the massive clawed hand from his other arm yanked her forward by the scrubs she still hadn’t taken off yet and then he licked her neck from the bottom up to her ear. “Never forget, girly, I got to you first,” he hissed, then shoved her away before Emma and Hank could intervene.

Scrambling backwards, Jean left the room as quickly as possible and went to sit at her desk. It would be a few minutes until the blood bag was ready for Logan, so she put her head down on her arms and listened to the various monitors pinging steadily in time with her boyfriend’s vitals. She wasn’t crying, but her whole body shook with revulsion at this incident. Even without injuring her Creed had somehow managed to bring back the pain in full force from when he’d assaulted her out in the woods.

A hand on her shoulder made her jump and her heart skipped a few beats, but it was only Hank. “I started the transfusion just now… are you alright, my dear?”

Jean forced a smile and nodded at her friend; she hadn't realized how long she'd been sitting like that.

“Yeah. It’s not like he actually hurt me or anything, so… I’m just worried about Logan,” she decided.

Hank sighed. “Emma has spoken with Scott about what you found at the lab. I promise you, if anything happens I will let you know right away. Please go get some rest, and when you’re feeling better I’ve been told the two children you first encountered have been asking for you.”

“They have?”

“Well, not directly, we haven’t gotten them to say a word.” Jean nodded slightly; Logan had been the same way when they’d first rescued him. “But they got the point across.”

“Alright.”

“Now, go sleep,” he tried to shoo her. “I’m quite serious about the ‘feeling better’ part as well, Jean.”

She just sighed: “I won’t until Logan does and you know it.”

“Yes… well, as I said, even the slightest difference will be immediately passed along to you.”

On the way out of the infirmary, Jean made sure to go to Logan’s bed for a moment. In spite of all the wires, tubes and bandages, for some reason she couldn’t help but think it would be what was left of his clothes making him uncomfortable, even though she knew he was deeply unconscious and would be for a while. She pulled his belt free of his ragged jeans and set it on the side-table, then tugged off his boots and dropped them on the floor. Jean peeled off his socks next, then his pants, which had been soaked with his own blood. (She had every intention of throwing them out.) Now in just his blue plaid underwear, she pulled a blanket over him up to the bottom of his ribs and lifted one of his big fists to kiss his knuckles. There was no getting to his face right now, but hopefully he’d feel it and it would pull him back to them a little.

There was nothing Jean could think of to say to him, but she also knew there wouldn’t be any point, so after a moment she tucked his hand back to his side and reluctantly left to go upstairs. Against Hank’s suggestions, she went to find the two kids first, and discovered them in an unassigned room on the students’ dorm hall with Bobby, who smiled a little when he noticed her. His eyes, though, said that he felt terrible for everything she’d had to do trying to save Logan.

“How’s he doing?”

“Too soon to tell,” Jean admitted, shaking her head and briefly glancing down at her feet. She realized she was still wearing her uniform and the scrubs from the lab. “We gave him a blood transfusion and he’s attached to virtually every life-support machine known to modern medicine, so… all we can do is wait for right now.”

“I’m really sorry, Dr. Grey,” Bobby sighed, mimicking her head-shake. “I hope he gets better soon.”

Jean nodded slightly and changed the subject. “How are they?” She gestured to the boy and the girl, who were sitting side-by-side on one of the beds.

“Well, they’re not super talkative, but they seem to know they’re safe here,” Bobby smirked. “So, uh… are they really…?”

“Look at their eyes and mannerisms, and then ask me,” Jean replied dryly. “I don’t think I know how we’ll get them introduced, though. Creed will probably just laugh when we tell him.”

“I thought Dr. McCoy’s going to fix him, though, like how you did with Logan…”

“He’s certainly going to try,” she muttered sarcastically. “That doesn’t mean it’ll work.”

Jean noticed the kids both staring at her and frowning. Their minds were wild and similar to Logan’s had been at the beginning, but they weren’t hard to read. Both of them could smell her boyfriend all over her, and didn’t understand why the scent was so familiar. _Because you’re his daughter, and you’re his nephew,_ she thought, but didn’t say it out loud or project it. Speaking of which… God, how would she break this to Logan? That in the labs they’d manipulated a genetic sample and grown a child who was exactly like him but for a Y chromosome?

Logan wasn’t especially kid-friendly, and if he even regained consciousness he’d been re-traumatized and it would take time to undo. How would he react to this discovery? It would make him angry, of course, because most things made Logan angry, but it also had a high probability of sending him spiraling into a panic attack. He did his damnedest to make sure he didn’t end up being responsible for people, but if he _did_ feel responsible somehow, he’d bend over backwards until his spine snapped for them. And with this child having been made from his DNA, Jean knew he’d feel responsible. Which would be great, seeing how he was an adult and she was a child, but being responsible terrified Logan and he still needed a lot of psychiatric help with everyday things as it was.

Assuming he woke up.

Jean looked at Bobby: “Can you stay here with him for a minute?”

“Yeah, why?”

“I think that she should… um, meet Logan. In case something happens. She should get to meet him at least once.”

“Yeah… yeah, she should,” Bobby agreed quietly, his blue eyes bright with sadness. “What about Creed?”

“Creed’s not going anywhere, and if Hank hasn’t made progress with him after a month or so, they’ll probably never know each other. Sabertooth wouldn’t be a good influence.”

Jean offered a hand to the girl, who stared for a moment before grabbing it. She managed a smile and led her boyfriend’s daughter back down to the infirmary, sensing that Hank was in the isolation cell with Creed and wouldn’t know she hadn’t done what he’d said.

Stepping through the doors, the girl tensed when she saw the medical equipment, but Jean had expected that and projected calmness. They slowly made their way to Logan, who was obscured now by a privacy screen. Jean slid it aside, noting that the transfusion bag only had about a third of its original volume. Some of the color was coming back into his skin, too, and his vitals were already head and shoulders above what they’d been when she left. His O2-sat was only 82, but last time it had been ridiculously low at 77, so that was a huge improvement, too.

Carefully, Jean opened the ball chain to slide Logan’s dog-tags from his neck. She held them out and the girl looked for a second, then sniffed. Her curious hazel eyes raised to meet Jean’s brown.

“I don’t know how much you understand yet, but this is your dad. He’s hurt right now, but it looks like he’s getting better, so you’ll get to meet him for real later on.”

Surprisingly, the child nodded, not blinking. She understood perfectly, her thoughts eerily familiar: _Pack. Same blood, alpha. I am his cub, so now his pack is my pack, too. Female, tall. She is his mate. I am his cub, so I am her cub, too, even without blood._

Jean didn’t even know what to make of that last thought. Sure, Logan’s alter-ego Wolverine referred to her like that, _mate,_ but it sounded odd coming from the mind of a child. And then the girl was nuzzling her fingers like a puppy, all love and acceptance. How exactly did this work? Were real wolves like this, too? And this girl didn’t even have a name, just a numerical designation, X-23. A nameless girl whose father didn’t know she existed, and yet she had immediately recognized Logan’s bond with Jean and simply acknowledged Logan’s idea of _pack._

So, wait.

Did that make her this girl’s mother, now?

_God, I need a nap._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The thing with Victor grabbing Jean to lick her neck is actually consistent with the behavior of serial rapists in reality. It's not about the feeling of sex, it's about being in control. Victor takes pleasure from knowing he controls her like that, and it's still very damaging for Jean even though she's a doctor and knows exactly why he is the way he is.
> 
> I hope I didn't trigger anybody, though. I'm just trying to write an interesting narrative.


	7. Sympathy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More dark stuff in this chapter.

Jean didn’t remember falling asleep, but when she woke up it was past dinner time. She was in Logan’s bed, sleeping in her light summer pajama bottoms and one of his undershirts, and raising her head revealed her uniform and the scrubs in a heap on the floor. Oh, yeah. She was in here because she’d let the two kids stay in her room for the time being, since it wasn’t like she slept there most nights anyway.

Stretching and yawning, Jean climbed off the bed and put on real clothes. She’d stowed some of them in Logan’s room for mornings similar to this scenario, when she just couldn’t be bothered or would be late otherwise. A glance into her own bedroom showed the boy and the girl quietly watching Netflix on the guest account of her laptop, as well as Rogue keeping an eye on them, who flashed her a look of sympathy.

Jean knew she should go eat something, but she just wasn’t interested in food right now. Instead she made a beeline for the infirmary. Hank was behind the privacy screen fixing a fresh bag to Logan’s IV drip when she pulled it back.

“I take it you slept,” her friend greeted, recording Logan’s vitals on the chart. “He’s doing a lot better. I don’t know if the serum they negated his mutation with has started to wear off or if it has something to do with his brother’s blood chemistry, or both, but he’s been stable and within the normal range for several hours now. I was even able to extubate him.”

“Thanks,” Jean nodded, turning her head to observe. Logan _did_ look a lot better; his skin was back to its usual color, he was breathing steadily, his wounds had faded so that they looked like barely more than scratches. A brush of his mind told her he was very nearly over the line between unconsciousness and normal sleep, too, which was an excellent sign. “At least he didn’t code again… CPR doesn’t work, and I couldn’t use the paddles because of his bones… he was medically dead for at least a minute. Thank God for epinephrine shots…”

“No, he’s been doing quite well,” Hank assured her, smiling a little. Then his expression became serious again. “I’m concerned about the pair you encountered.”

“Well, if you can’t help Creed even a little by the end of September or so… I wouldn’t let the boy meet him. If that happens we’ll just hand him back to SHIELD.”

“And the girl?”

Jean sighed and closed her eyes briefly. “I don’t know. Logan is still so ill, and after this…” The other doctor was quiet while she relayed the thoughts she’d heard in the girl’s mind. “It’s not like I don’t want to help her. Of course I want to help her, but with the way Logan is I wouldn’t have time to give both of them the amount of attention and care they need. She could smell… something, and it told her how Logan and I love each other. And she knows that Logan is her father, so… she thinks she belongs to me, too. What am I supposed to do, Hank? I’m just like Charles, I see all the students like they’re my kids. I never really had the need to _become_ a parent because I already felt like I am one.”

“Well…” The furry blue mutant paused for a long time. “This girl mimics Logan’s mindset when he first joined us, and you did an excellent job helping him if I may say so.” The complement drew a small smile. “And I do not believe she is as damaged as he was. I caught her scent earlier, so I know you took her here to show her who he was in case things went south.” Oh, yeah. Hank was a feral, too. He acted so civilized that Jean often forgot. “She could benefit a great deal from you acknowledging her as your offspring.”

“Maybe… but Logan-”

“Will be fine if you explain it to him,” Hank interrupted. “He’s quite intelligent and understanding when he allows himself to be.”

A grunt turned their heads, and Jean watched Logan cough roughly and spit out a blood clot that had been stuck in his lung. He was still again after that, but it raised her hopes further that he’d be up and about soon. Reaching to slip her hand around his, she smiled when his fingers twitched slightly at her touch. Some tiny part of his mind knew she was there with him.

* * *

 

The next morning saw Jean return to Logan’s place in the infirmary. His wounds had completely disappeared overnight, leaving no scars, and she could feel his brain activity starting to regain some of its normal patterns. He was no longer unconscious, just exhausted, so she’d leave him be until he came back on his own. It seemed surreal to her that 30 hours ago, he’d been having seizures in the jet and didn’t look like he’d survive the next twenty minutes beyond that. But now he didn’t even require an oxygen cannula, just a fluid line to keep him hydrated until he woke up. The EKG leads and pulse oximeter were still present, but only because that was standard procedure. His healing factor had obviously kicked in again and he didn’t need the constant monitoring.

It made Jean feel better to be with him, though. Before Logan had been her boyfriend, he’d been her patient (which she still felt had been inappropriate, but he loved her fiercely and she loved him back, so it didn’t bother her as much as it had before), and she couldn’t help feeling like his health and safety was her job as a doctor.

“Ughn…” Logan groaned, squeezing her hand suddenly in a grip so tight she thought he’d give her a crush fracture. Some amount of consciousness was finding him, even though his mind was delirious. “Need beer.”

Jean couldn’t help but give in to the fit of laughter that welled up inside her. Of course that would be his first thought when he woke up; beer was one of the few things in the world Logan actually liked. The sound must’ve stirred something in him, too, because she could feel him starting to grasp at clarity.

“Welcome back to the land of the living,” she smiled once she got a grip on herself again. She ran her thumb lightly across the back of his hand. “How do you feel right now?”

“Mph… hit by truck,” her boyfriend grunted, not opening his eyes. “My claws…? Still there…? Got stomped on… Victor…”

“What do you mean? Victor’s locked up and you have all your claws.”

“Claws… threw me… fuckin’ truck…”

Jean shook her head at his confusion, but she still kept her smile because it was such a relief to hear him talking at all.

“It’s okay, Logan. There’s no truck. You’re here with me, at the mansion.”

“My claws…” He groaned again, loosening the vice-like hold on her fingers. Something snapped into place for him, and she felt his awareness return. “Jeannie… that you?”

“Yeah. I’m here, baby.”

“How…?”

“We tracked you and got you out. They only had you for a few hours, though. You’ll probably be back to normal by tomorrow night. There was… an accident, and you got hurt, but you’re completely healed now.”

“Weren’t no accident,” Logan growled, some of the strength returning to his voice. Now, his eyes cracked open slightly, showing the hazel had darkened to a brown that was almost black. “Knew what I was doin’.”

“No, I saw you,” Jean frowned. “It was because of the soldiers, they were coming for us and you panicked…”

“No.” His eyes were starting to look glassy, betraying the depth of his pain that had nothing to do with physical injuries. “Knew what I was doin’. Actually… felt pretty fuckin’ calm ’bout it, too. Knew that… finally, it was ’bout to be over. No more nightmares. No more Sabertooth. No more experiments…” Jean’s stomach clenched at the tears starting to roll from the corners of his eyes. “Just… so fuckin’ perfect. Finally had a way to make everythin’ stop. Felt so good. Never thought pain could be that good. Guess I ain’t done, though. Still here. Still fuckin’ here.”

“Logan-”

“Stop.” He closed his eyes again and took a long breath. “Don’t even fuckin’ say it. It ain’t true an’ I don’t wanna hear it. Not from you, or anyone else. You don’t get it, an’ I know you don’t. All this fuckin’ bullshit I gotta put up with… finally ’bout to get outta it all. An’ you took it away from me.”

“Logan, I…” Jean’s voice cracked as she started welling up, too.

“An’ you can’t even defend yourself, neither. Just… go away, Jeannie. Please. Wanna be alone right now.”

Logan struggled to roll onto his side so that he was facing away from her, pulling the blanket to his shoulders and obscuring his head with his arms. Jean could see him trembling, even through her own tears, and it felt like her heart had dropped into her stomach. The anguish rolled from him in waves, each one slapping her mind harder than the last, and once she remembered how to move she wiped her eyes and went around to the other side of the bed.

Jean pulled Logan so that he was sitting up, then wrapped the blanket around his shoulders and let him lean his face against her. His fingers curled into her sweater, which was also muffling his whimpers and sobs. With one arm holding him and the other hand stroking down his messy hair, she had no way to wipe her own tears, but it didn’t feel important at the moment.

She didn’t think she’d really seen her boyfriend cry like this; he was in so much pain and couldn’t hold it in anymore. Logan had such a desperation to die after his entire life had seen only suffering, and when he’d finally had a chance it had still been stolen from him by the person he loved. That was a special kind of betrayal.

“Logan, I didn’t mean to hurt you,” Jean whispered, not able to speak louder because her voice would shake too much. “I wasn’t trying to hurt you… it’s not always this bad. I’m going to do everything I can to help you get better, you won’t always feel like this… please don’t keep hurting yourself.”

Logan just shook his head, still hiccupping into her shirt with parts of the fabric balled in his fists. Jean hated this, the way he felt like nothing could ever improve in his life and all he could expect was pain. He was so frustrated and angry and exhausted and depressed, and he had nothing left except to sob into her sweater.

After several minutes, Logan still hadn’t calmed down, but he was somewhat quieter and trying to talk through her shirt.

“I’m sorry… don’t wanna make you feel like shit just ’cause I do… fuck, I just… Jeannie… I… I…” He sputtered again and wrapped his arms around her, bringing her in to nuzzle a dry spot.

“You don’t have to be sorry,” Jean countered, resting her cheek on top of Logan’s head. “I know why you feel this way, and it’s not your fault. You didn’t deserve _anything_ that they did to you. You’re not an animal, you’re not a weapon, you’re not an experiment. And you’re not a monster.” She pulled back slightly to lift his face, catching his tears on her thumbs. “You’re Logan, you’re a human being. Hey, look at me… you’re also my boyfriend and I love you.”

Jean didn’t understand why, but for some reason that just made him cry harder.

* * *

 

After regaining consciousness, Logan was allowed to leave the infirmary and went straight up to his room. Jean would check on him every half-hour or so, but between those times he was just sitting on his bed with the tip of a single claw extended to carve lines into his arm. It was slow and deliberate, dragging the point of the blade through his skin so that he could watch it bleed and wish it didn’t close up on its own. But of course, it always did, leading him to repeat the action endlessly. He’d stop whenever he smelled Jean coming because he didn’t want to upset her.

Sometime before lunch, though, things suddenly got very interesting - and not in a good way.

Logan was taking a break from tearing holes in his skin to pace restlessly around the room when an oddly familiar scent reached him from the hallway. It smelled like him, but _not,_ somehow. Suspicious, he took a deep sniff to try and identify it. It wasn’t Sabertooth, that was certain, but only Sabertooth had a similar odor to him that he knew of. So he flung open his door to find a child standing outside, staring up at him. She couldn’t have been more than 11 or 12, he guessed, but aside from the age and gender differences it was like looking into a mirror.

“The fuck?” Logan frowned, staring down at her and not knowing what to think as he looked into what could easily have been his own hazel eyes.

The girl cocked her head at him, raising an eyebrow as well; this was unmistakably one of his own trademarked expressions. She was even sniffing him!

Thoroughly unnerved, Logan almost didn’t notice Jean coming down the hall for his next check. Once his ears caught her footsteps, though, he immediately felt rage and confusion boil up from his gut. He jabbed a finger at the kid: “You wanna tell me what the hell this is?”

“She came from the lab they were holding you in,” his girlfriend answered, stopping several feet away. “It’s obvious from the records we decoded that they had samples of your DNA.”

“Jesus fuckin’ Christ, this better be a nightmare right now…”

“She’s your daughter.”

“Yeah, like hell… I don’t got no kids, an’ I sure as shit ain’t havin’ none later on, neither. Ain’t my kid an’ that’s it, end’a discussion.” He noticed that, for some reason, she wasn’t intimidated by him at all and was even reaching out to grab the corner of his flannel shirt. Logan smacked her hand away. “The fuck’s wrong with you? Don’t fuckin’ touch me.”

His words were met with a questioning look, and god dammit, this _needed_ to stop right now. He clenched his fists and the claws snapped out of his knuckles… only for the girl to answer his snarl with an identical noise and unleashing her own set of adamantium blades. There were only two in her hands, he saw, but she also had one in each foot. They were unmistakably a match for his own, and for some reason that scared the living shit out of him. But Logan didn’t show it, instead feeling himself starting to bristle as he intensified his hostile growl.

Incredibly, she was posturing right back at him, not afraid in the slightest even though he could easily tear her in half if he wanted. She didn’t have any chest or back hair that would fluff up defensively like his, but she certainly knew to draw extra air into her lungs so she could look bigger that way.

“The fuck is this, Jeannie? Pretty fuckin’ obvious she deliberately came here lookin’ for me.”

“She was looking for you because she knows you’re her dad,” Jean snapped, clearly losing her patience with him. “Okay, _stop it,_ both of you.” She pulled the girl back from Logan but still glared at him.

“I ain’t doin’ this,” he growled, retracting his claws but maintaining an unfriendly pose by folding his arms over his chest. “Didn’t ask for this an’ I ain’t doin’ it.”

“Right, because she _did_ ask for this,” Jean replied sarcastically. “She can smell you, Logan. She _knows_ she’s your daughter. And you know what, she smelled you on me and figured out that we’re in a relationship, so now she thinks she’s _my_ daughter, too. So how am I supposed to handle her? I can’t _not_ help her, and you know it, so since you need so much help from me, too, you could at least give me a hand with her… and for Christ’s sake, Logan, you know how it feels to be in her place, and she doesn’t even have a _name_ yet. She needs you.”

“She needs _you,_ darlin’...” He wasn’t yelling anymore, because if he was honest he actually did feel kind of bad about this. “The fuck am I s’posed to do for her? Don’t know how to take care’a little kids, I don’t even remember my dad except that he fuckin’ died right before me an’ Victor decided to scram…”

Logan trailed off, realizing the memory only as the words came to him. God dammit, he didn’t want to have any recollection of Sabertooth being his brother. He was still a little in denial about that.

Jean sighed, but it was surprisingly understanding. She came over and hugged him, letting him nuzzle her hair. Letting her scent wash through his senses, he almost didn’t care that the girl’s thin arms grabbed onto him, wrapping around his waist since she didn’t even come up to his shoulder. And then a terrifying, but somehow also intriguing, thought struck him.

_This what a normal family's like?_

_*Yes,*_ Jean’s voice entered his mind. Even in this insane situation her telepathic words were soothing for him, and he closed his eyes. _*This is what “normal” is supposed to be like. You just need to embrace it, Logan. It’s okay for you to be scared, too. I know you weren’t expecting anything like this, and I wasn’t either. But she needs you, like I said… she needs_ both _of us.*_

_Don’t know if I can do this, darlin’... I don’t know nothin’ ’bout kids._

_*Nobody ever does at first. But it’ll come to you, and if you just do your best, she’ll know.*_

* * *

 

The rest of the morning was spent leading her around. Logan still didn’t think he liked having a vulnerable creature trailing along after him while he showed her the mansion and then the woods, pointing out a few of the places he frequented but not all of them in case he needed to escape her for a while. It wouldn’t have taken as long if she didn’t feel the need to scratch each of the trees he’d marked with his claws, adding her own signature of gashes in the bark.

Jean just watched their lack of interaction, and Logan could feel that she wanted him to actually _talk_ to the girl, but even if he’d wanted to he had no idea how. What was he supposed to say about this? Every time the kid scratched the trunk of a tree, though, Jean chuckled a little. He didn’t know whether to be annoyed, confused or what at the fact that she thought the action was cute.

Once they went back inside for lunch, Logan was met by several X-Men: Scott, Ororo, Rogue, Jubilee, Kitty, Bobby and Piotr. Except for Scott, of course, they all smiled at him in greeting.

“The hell’s goin’ on, now?”

“We just wanted to say we’re glad you’re okay,” Rogue answered.

She and the other two girls each gave him brief hugs, and then he noticed they were all holding shiny boxes.

“We knew you didn’t feel so hot right now, so we got you some stuff,” Jubilee explained at his look of confusion. “We even made Scott do it, too.”

“Uh…”

“Here, open mine first,” the bubbly girl insisted, shoving something flat and rectangular into his hands. “You can put it on your door.”

Logan frowned, but hesitantly peeled open the reflective blue paper to see it was a sign with holes for nails in each corner: **LOGAN’S ROOM. TRESPASSERS WILL BE STABBED. SURVIVORS WILL BE STABBED AGAIN.** That actually made him snort with amusement. “Thanks, kid.”

Piotr was next, his gift unwrapped but even better than the first: “My mother sends care packages to me, and sometimes they are with vodka. I knew you enjoy alcohol very much, so here is authentic Russian _Stolichnaya._ ”

“Damn, think I might actually be startin’ to like you now, Tin Man.”

Rogue and Bobby had gotten him a new wrist watch after his old one had been broken during his capture, Kitty gave him a _very_ expensive looking Rangers jersey that even had his name on it, and Ororo had bought him several plaid shirts to replace the one that had been ruined in the lab. Scott went last, looking begrudging, and surprisingly had the most stuff.

“This is from Charles, he said not to worry about paying the bills on it.” A credit card. Hmm, that could be fun. “And… Jean told me to get these for you.” A large package that contained a comprehensive toolkit for vehicle repairs, and inside a catalogue had been placed - motorcycle parts. It was a surprisingly thoughtful gesture, even if Jean had made Scott do it. “This way you can build your own and won’t keep stealing mine.”

“Got it. Uh… thanks. All’a you. This was a real nice thing to do for me.”

Getting the words out was a struggle, but he really did mean it, and their answering smiles told him they knew he did, too. Jean and Piotr helped carry his stuff upstairs to his room, and Logan found himself in an unusually good mood…

...until he emerged back into the hall and saw a boy standing next to the girl that had been grown from him. The boy’s scent was similar to Logan’s, though not quite to the same extent as the girl’s, but the relation was still pretty obvious. He couldn’t help but groan.

“Fuckin’ hell, another one?”


	8. Howlett

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is kind of fluffy, but things go off the deep end again in the next chapter, so that makes up for it...
> 
> Also, the meal Logan's preparing at the beginning of the chapter is actually something I eat pretty frequently, chunks of beef with mushrooms and garlic. Given that he's a predator and I'm also not really a fan of vegetables, it seemed pretty appropriate.

So the second kid is his brother’s, but somehow Logan gets roped into looking after _both_ of them. Go figure.

“I ain’t exactly known for bein’ a gormet chef, baby,” he grumbled as he dropped an entire stick of butter into the pan. “You sure this’s a good idea?”

“They’re cubs, you’re the alpha. Therefore, you bring them their meat.”

“You been readin’ them wolf books again?”

“They’re really helpful,” Jean teased, reaching over to lightly poke his upper arm and then leaning back against the counter. “And it’s good for you, too. Creed’s probably going to completely fall through before he even _sees_ his son, so he’ll just end up with us anyway. And even if Hank pulls off a miracle, it won’t hurt that boy at all to have you show him some kindness.”

“Grmph,” Logan rumbled, not really agreeing. He extended a claw and sliced the pieces of cube steak into strips before dropping them into the pan with the butter, which was already half-melted, and dumping a huge spoonful of minced garlic after it. He liked garlic, and he was the one being forced to cook, so if they didn’t like it that was just too damn bad. “They got names? Ain’t heard you call them anythin’.”

“X-23 and X-57,” Jean muttered dryly. “That’s all their tags said and they have no official birth certificates, just a file each and Kitty said it was the bare minimum. Most of the kids we recovered from the lab only have one genome donor listed, and it’s the same with them. She’s only got you and he’s only got Victor.”

“Fan-fuckin’-tastic,” Logan grunted, scooping a big fistfull of mushrooms into the mixture and stirring the whole pile into itself with a plastic spatula. “Used to live out in the woods, I think. Made this kinda food if I had patience… usually just ate it raw.”

“Well, I’d appreciate it if you actually cook it because I don’t feel like having food poisoning this week…”

“Ah, you’ll be fine, Jeannie,” he smirked, glancing at her from the corner of his eye. “Been eatin’ raw meat for… however long. Ain’t done me in yet.”

Normally she would’ve rolled her eyes at that comment, but he could tell she was just relieved he was making jokes again. In truth, he still felt exactly as bad as this morning when he’d woken up, but he was carefully shielding that part of his mind because he didn’t want Jean to worry about him. She was already stressed out enough and he didn’t want to contribute more than he already had, so he’d suffer in silence. Logan couldn’t help but feel like she deserved a break from his bitching and moaning for a few days. So he changed the subject by asking a question that had been bothering him since he’d first seen the girl’s built-in weapons.

“So… they fully grafted, like me?”

“No.” Jean shook her head. “It was actually only applied to their claws. Their bones are still normal.”

“Good.” He certainly wasn’t overly thrilled with the idea of taking care of two pre-pubescent children that he’d only met this morning, but his instincts were as strong as ever - protect the cubs at all costs. “Anythin’ else I should know ’bout them?”

“They were in the same room together for their entire lives, so they’re very close. Hank and I don’t dare separate them unless we have to.”

“Hm. Closer’n me an’ my brother,” he commented, briefly stirring again before glancing at the two 11-year-olds over his shoulder. They seemed to be having an entire conversation through nothing but facial expressions, which was incredible. He could believe that they’d been held in the same cell for that long. “So… what if Hank _does_ fix Victor, then? He ain’t gonna wanna stay here, an’ I sure as hell ain’t followin’ him nowhere, neither.”

“I don’t know,” Jean admitted with a slight shrug. “We haven’t planned that far ahead. Helping Creed recover is a long shot anyway, so we’re trying not to bank on it too much. It’s not a realistic objective.”

“Yeah, well…” Logan shook his head. “Don’t want him here. Don’t wanna look at that fuckin’ bastard. Not after what he did.” He slipped an arm around her and squeezed gently. “Prob’ly do it again if I give him the chance, but I ain’t gonna. Never gonna make it even close to you long as I’m breathin’, baby.”

“I know.” She pecked his cheek right above where his scruff ended. “He’ll probably end up back in The Vault by the end of next month, anyway, so don’t worry. Creed won’t be here for very long.”

Logan kissed her for a moment, enjoying the pleasant sensation until four small hands were suddenly yanking impatiently on his flannel. As soon as he looked at them, the pair each pointed excitedly at the pan of beef strips, and he could swear they were able to make their stomachs growl on command.

“A’right, scram,” he snapped, shoving them both but without hurting them. “It ain’t done yet, go pester someone else for a few minutes.”

As they glared at him and then scampered away, he thought he heard the girl mimic “it ain’t done yet” under her breath, but it was so quiet even with his enhanced senses that he immediately doubted it had been real. Still, though, if it _had_ happened, that meant she was already picking up the ability to talk, and the sooner she did the better. Gestures and growls were fine aside from not answering the majority of questions and being ambiguous most of the time.

“Jesus…” Logan mumbled, shaking his head. “Don’t think I can do this, Jeannie… it ain’t even been a day yet an’ I’m a’ready sick’a them. An’ then…  couple’a weeks or months, get so fuckin’ tired’a those two followin’ me everywhere an’ I’mma fuckin’ smack them across the school. Except they’re cubs an’ they don’t know better, I can’t hurt cubs… but god al-fuckin’-mighty I a’ready wanna beat some sense into them.”

“You know… I don’t think you really would,” Jean answered slowly.

“What?”

“Hear me out. Your instincts are so strong, even with you taking these medications, that they wouldn’t let you hurt them. You’ve been made to destroy, but I know you, Logan. The _real_ you. And you don’t like doing those things, especially not to someone that can’t defend themselves. And just recognizing your frustration with them, knowing it’s wrong, means you probably wouldn’t lay a finger on them no matter what they do. Besides, you took Rogue under your wing without even being asked. You can do this.”

“Wish I had your confidence, Jeannie…”

“You don’t have to. I’ll be strong for you.”

He’d said that to her, right after the incident with Sabertooth in the woods, and hearing it made him chuckle a little. Big or small, she always remembered the things he did for her, and he loved that because he compulsively did the same thing. He knew exactly how to make her coffee without sniffing to check anymore, that she liked having him brush her hair sometimes, that she was most turned on by him when he came back from the garage in just his jeans and boots with greasy hands and a film of sweat on his shoulders. He knew that she liked sucking him off in the shower, because she was the only one who could make him groan like that while his legs threatened to turn to jelly. That thought made him give her a dirty smirk, and her amused look totally counteracted the eye-roll that she gave him in return.

“You listenin’ on me, darlin’?” Logan snickered, giving her a pinch on her ass and cocking an eyebrow.

“I don’t usually have to when you look like that,” Jean answered, smiling _that_ smile and making his knees start to feel weak. “Don’t burn your food, baby.”

“Hm? Oh, right. Shit.”

Logan stirred around in the pan, decided the meat was cooked enough and turned off the stove. He scooped out a “normal” portion into the first bowl for her, then filled two almost to overflowing for the kids and put the rest into a much larger dish for himself. He knew their metabolisms would be way beyond a normal child’s, but they were still no match for the bottomless pit that was the Wolverine’s stomach.

“Soup’s on,” he grunted, kicking a couple of extra chairs to the table in the middle of the shared kitchen and arranging the bowls. The two hellions would be on one side with him and Jean on the other.

She must’ve called to them psychically, because just as Logan was pulling out the silverware drawer they both charged in to fling themselves up on the seats and start voraciously scooping the shredded beef and Chaga mushrooms into their mouths with their hands. He didn’t even think they were stopping to chew, and it was a miracle they weren’t both choking every other swallow.

“Jesus,” he snorted, shaking his head and grabbing only two forks.

“You used to be like that,” his girlfriend reminded him, accepting one of the utensils as they also sat. “And using a fork or a spoon like a person doesn’t mean your own table manners aren’t still atrocious. They make steak knives for a reason. You don’t have to use your claws for _everything._ ”

“Inefficient an’ a waste’a effort,” Logan shrugged, taking a huge bite. Actually he didn’t really chew much more than the kids did. “All ’bout runnin’ things smoothly, darlin’. Claws’re just easier.”

“It’s also rude to lick meat juice and Tabasco sauce off of them,” Jean commented dryly.

“Whatever.”

For some reason she had her laptop with her and was doing something with her free hand as she ate, so Logan busied himself studying the behavior of the two rambunctious cubs settled across from him. They were lapping the remaining broth out of the dishes and then silently talking through expressions again, which he had to admit was fascinating. It was obvious neither of them were telepaths, and it was equally clear they didn’t speak a word of any language yet, but somehow they could get the point across to each other just by twitching their eyes and mouths. He knew it had something to do with their parentage too, though. They could read each other’s scents as well, and Logan and Victor were much more prone to the use of body language rather than words. Wolverine, Sabertooth, and their respective clones - the nicknames were only appropriate to their claws, because they were otherwise timber wolves in their behavior and instinct. Wolves with claws but in human form.

“Hey,” Jean addressed the three ferals suddenly, breaking Logan from his reflections.

“Hm?” he grunted, looking her way.

“Well, since you’re all done eating, we may as well do this now. They _really_ need names before we get too much deeper into this so that Hank can print up birth certificates for them.”

“What’s this ‘we’ crap?” Logan snorted. “Could give a shit what they’re called long as they ain’t underfoot too much an’ don’t steal my booze.”

She rolled her eyes at him, but didn’t say anything else and got the look that meant she was telepathically conveying the concept to the pair of wild children. They both started nodding enthusiastically, and it made him wonder what she’d told them.

The boy was very easy - like his father, he wasn’t especially concerned with such minor and insignificant details. Jean had barely started reading down a list of boys’ names when he chose it, and ended up as Brian Victor Creed. The girl, though, was much more picky, and it took two and a half lists before she finally settled on Laura. But Laura what?

“Can’t call her after me, I ain’t even sure what my name  _is,_ ” Logan scoffed.

“According to your brother’s memories, you’re actually James Howlett,” Jean offered. “But we could have it legally changed to Logan if you want.”

“Like I give a fuck. Still won’t work, though. James ain’t a girl’s name.” He frowned. “Could use your name…”

“Absolutely not.”

“Why?”

“Because I hate my name,” she huffed, “and also because she’s not-”

“Hey, no, you ain’t allowed to say it,” Logan snapped, cutting her off. “A’ready told me what she sees you as, blood don’t got nothin’ to do with it an’ you know it, Jeannie. There ain’t a chance in hell I’mma let her call me ‘dad’ if she ain’t callin’ you ‘mom’ first. Not doin’ this on my own, you can either suck it up an’ help me or I ain’t gonna do this at all.”

Jean was almost leaning back in shock from the harshness of his voice. Truthfully, Logan was surprised by it too, realizing this was the first time he could remember actually feeling upset with her. But he didn’t let his face betray him, still pinning her with his hard stare. She needed to know that he wouldn’t compromise or back down, and that she really did just need to pick an end of the ultimatum because he meant it.

Finally she nodded a little.

“Okay. You-you’re right, Logan. I’m sorry.”

Her stammering made his heart clench. How could he stay mad at her? He sighed: “It’s okay, darlin’. Didn’t mean to yell, I’m just kinda scared ’bout this.” The admission cost a lot for Logan’s pride, but this was Jean. He’d never be dishonest with her. Sighing again through his nose, he looked over at the gir-Laura. “How ’bout you, kid? Thoughts on a middle name?”

The cub immediately jabbed her finger at him, not blinking, which forced him to look away again. She’d definitely gotten his intensity.

“Okay, then,” Jean nodded. “I guess she doesn’t care that your first name isn’t for girls.”

“Grrrrmmph.”

“Oh, stop,” she chuckled, poking him. “So Logan or Howlett?”

“Howlett. Don’t need nobody drawin’ a connection that don’t need to know.”

“Alright, then. So Brian Victor and Laura James… it’s nice to meet you,” Jean smiled.

Both kids smiled widely back at her - she was so kind and made them feel safe.

“Gotta get rid’a them tags, now,” Logan grunted, jerking his chin slightly at Laura and Brian. “Can’t have them runnin’ ’round thinkin’ they still ain’t people.”

“Just like how we took yours?” she answered sarcastically.

“That’s different.”

“Is it, now?”

“Yup.”

“Why?”

“Just is. Theirs don’t got names, just a serial number…”

“Which matters because…?”

“C’mon, Jeannie, why’d they need to wear a constant reminder’a where they came from?”

“The same reason you do. Now stop being a hypocrite and watch them so I can go get my purse,” Jean ordered.

“Wait, what? Why?”

“We’re taking them to the store.”

Logan made a face that was a cross between his “you’re outta your fuckin’ mind” and “who the hell comes up with ideas this bad?” expressions, which she just laughed at before disappearing briefly. Then he noticed the pair both watching him intently.

“What?” he snarled, already well beyond the limits of his fragile patience.

Four eyebrows quirked at him, looking into his angry glare without wavering. They were so much like him and his brother that it was creepy, and eventually it was Logan who turned his head with a frustrated snort. These two better learn how to talk, _fast,_ before he got even more pissed off at their lack of communication skills. Sure, his were pretty bad most of the time, but at least he had any at all.

They still just stared at him like that until Jean finally found them again, handing him his wallet and keys. She paused a little at his grimace.

“Are you okay?”

“Make them stop before I start conveniently ignorin’ my ‘not hurtin’ the cubs policy’ an’ give them a good thrashin’,” Logan growled, just barely keeping his temper in check. His hand balled into a fist around the D-clip of keys as the claws suddenly itched and burned intensely, begging to be flicked loose and dug into something warm that would bleed. “Why we gotta take them anyplace? I really ain’t in the mood for this shit right now, Jeannie.”

“Clothes, mostly, and a few other things. I want them to start feeling like real kids as soon as possible.”

“You sure that ain’t gonna get someone gutted?”

“You’ve been in a mall before, Logan.”

“Yeah, an’ I remember how that went last time. I’m sure as hell more cranky than I was then, too.”

“Hey, deep breaths,” Jean commanded, gently resting her hands on either side of his face and meeting his eyes. Logan huffed stubbornly, but then gave in and did as he was told. It never really helped much, but she said it would become more effective each time he did it. “Better?”

“No,” he grunted flatly, busying his hands by clipping his keys to his belt.

“Should I bring a shot of Ativan just in case?”

“Fuck no, I hate that shit. Can’t keep my eyes straight after that an’ I end up droolin’ on myself.”

Jean gave him _the look,_ the “you’re being stupid for a stupid reason and you know you’re being stupid” look, but at least she didn’t fight with him about it. That would’ve made him wish even more that he’d succeeded in the very early hours yesterday.

The four of them made their way through the halls to the garage, Laura and Brian in front so that Jean could keep an eye on them. Logan wasn’t consciously aware of it, but his body was having all kinds of minute tics - flexing his hands in and out of tight fists ready to clock someone or release his claws, grinding his jaw until his molars were about to crack again, constantly flicking his eyes around and flaring his nostrils because he suddenly _needed_ to be even more hyper-aware of his surroundings than he already was.

And as he was failing to notice all these tells, his girlfriend was so concentrated on the pair of untamed cubs ahead of them that she didn’t notice them, either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Given everything else that's gone on in this narrative, I've been making Logan a terrible dad on purpose. He has no idea what he's doing and the fact that Laura even exists terrifies him, so he's also not thinking about how he could potentially improve those skills. And let's face it. Given the way he was in the movies, even with the way he took care of Rogue and let her get close to him, he probably wouldn't have been great at raising kids anyway. Sure, he protected them, and took it seriously while doing it, but just him being the way he is doesn't really make for good parent material.


	9. Suffer In Silence

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for self-harm in this chapter.

Jean was starting to kick herself for not bringing the Ativan and they weren’t even there yet; Logan was gripping the stick shift of his truck so hard his knuckles were white.

“Don’t even,” he grumbled, glancing from the corner of his eye. “Wanna get this fuckin’ trip over with.”

She shook her head but stayed silent. He had a point; turning around and going home would just mean prolonging the frustration for him, so it could be worth the risk to power through the situation as it stood.

As they were pulling into the parking lot, he started talking again. “So clothes, I get that, but what else? An’ why’s it involve me?”

“You’re spending quality time bonding with your daughter and nephew,” Jean answered, then realized how patronizing that probably sounded and reached out to stroke her fingers along the back of his hand. “It won’t be as bad as you think. Jubilee and Kitty aren’t here to get a rise out of you this time.”

“Mph,” Logan grunted, pulling the key from the ignition and slamming the door harder than he needed to after he’d gotten out.

Okay, so maybe this _had_ been a terrible idea, she admitted to herself. Two wild kids who had no idea how to behave themselves in public yet and a grumpy boyfriend with anger management issues weren’t the best combination with a trip to the mall. But again, Jean reiterated mentally, they were here now and might as well just get it all over with.

First things first: shoes.

Laura and Brian hadn’t had anything on their feet when they’d been recovered, so once back at the mansion Jean had found the smallest pairs of combat boots they had in storage for the team, but even though Brian was a boy and large for his age they were too big for him. It was worse for Laura, being smaller than her cousin, and whenever the pair walked around without being barefoot they clomped along heavily with no chance at being quiet. That actually seemed to be setting Logan off even more than the kids themselves - he could be wearing bells over pieces of loose scrap metal and still be completely silent if he wanted.

“Okay,” Jean addressed the pair, who were looking around excitedly with huge grins. They’d never seen a place like this before, and with her and Logan there they felt safe to explore and gawk to their hearts’ content. “Just sit here and put your foot down flat, like this.” She made sure Brian’s heel was snugly to the back of the scale. “And then this part slides forward…” One of the things she’d learned in medical school was that explaining the steps while you worked helped children understand and feel more comfortable with the action. “...and now we know what shoe size you need. But, since you’re growing, we’re actually going to buy shoes for you that are half a size up from that.”

Brian nodded enthusiastically, picking his foot up on her command so that Laura’s could be measured as well. And, as Logan had predicted, the two of them were actually _much_ worse than the three teenage girls they’d been here with before. Brian and Laura made it a point to try on literally every pair of shoes in their size, and wouldn’t move on to the next one until they’d sprinted the perimeter of the store. Jean couldn’t help feel a twinge of embarrassment when she noticed a sales clerk watching the kids, wearing an expression that started out amused and ended up annoyed.

The clerk had nothing on Logan, though; he was leaning into a corner with his arms folded tightly over his chest, ears red with barely-restrained fury and arms twitching with the obvious need to release his claws.

Finally, after more than an hour, Jean convinced them to choose _one_ pair of sneakers: Laura’s were mainly white but with light pink accents, which were feminine but surprisingly tasteful for children’s shoes. Brian’s, on the other hand, were anything but. They were black and bright red with thick Velcro fasteners across the tops, and blue lights in the soles flashed every time he took a step down. Of _course_ those were the ones he wanted, they broadcasted “pre-teen boy” in every way.

Along with the sneakers were rubber rain boots and a pair of flip-flops each, and then it was on to the next store. Jean noted with concern that her boyfriend was getting more and more restless by the minute.

“Logan?” His head whipped to the side and mostly-green eyes speared into her. “Are you feeling okay?”

A deep rumble of “ _Hhhhhhhgggrrrrrrrrrrr..._ ” from the bottom of his chest was the only answer she got.

It confirmed her earlier assessment that this had, in fact, been a very stupid idea. Not just leaving his Ativan at home on his insistence, but bringing him here at all against his protests when he’d already been wound up and irritated. Jean tried to remedy this by making him sit on one of the benches for a few minutes and letting him squeeze her hand as hard as he needed without telling him how much it hurt. She’d probably have bruises after, but that wasn’t important. Logan couldn’t calm down on his own, so once he got into a fit of rage or had an episode he had no means of returning to normal without her intervening.

In the corner of Jean’s vision, Laura was making sure to thoroughly scent out each of the thin potted trees in the mall, and only a telepathic command every so often prevented the girl from “claiming” one with her claws. Brian was directly in her view - they’d put on their new shoes as soon as Logan had coughed up for them, and now he was deliberately stomping in tight circles across the floor just to watch his feet light up. Jean didn’t quite understand how he was so engrossed by something so simple, but it was also a very cute scene to witness and if she hadn’t read Brian’s file she would’ve never thought he was Creed’s son, spitting image or no.

Logan finally released his death-grip on her hand. “We goin’ or what?”

“Yeah, we should get moving again,” Jean agreed, psychically calling both kids back over to them before proceeding into a clothing store.

The girls’ section was closer, so they went there first. Amusingly, Jean couldn’t help but notice that Logan purposefully turned his back as Laura selected a few packages of cotton underwear, and she realized that this was the first way he was accepting her as his daughter: he was embarrassed to watch her pick out such articles of clothing. It was probably the most normal thing she’d ever seen him do, and better yet it positively screamed “nervous parent” about him.

Clothes shopping for Laura actually turned out to be somewhat interesting. She didn’t seem to need anything that was particularly “girly,” mostly picking plain T-shirts and sweaters in light colors like blue and green with the occasional splash of pink. And for some reason, which Jean attributed to Laura being very much a product of Logan’s genes, she wordlessly but still stubbornly insisted on choosing her pants from the boys’ section instead. This ended up being several pairs of cargo pants in neutral tans and grays as well as some blue jeans.

Brian was the opposite. Everything he wanted was bright reds and blues, sometimes orange thrown in as well, and the more noticeable it was the better. Shirts with horizontal stripes of varying colors, hoodies in chromatic green with white block lettering across the chest, and a couple of different baseball caps. Even his boxers were absurdly bright and flashy, despite Jean explaining to Brian (several times, in fact,) that nobody could see them but him.

Due to his poor track record with undershirts, Logan ended up tossing in some wife-beaters for himself at the end, and then offered a wide variety of profanities when the total ended up being several hundred dollars because apparently the kids had picked the most expensive brands somehow. Jean considered rebuking him for his language in front of young ears, but ultimately decided not to since Logan was already in such a terrible mood and just wanted to leave.

The biggest mistake was entering the Toys “R” Us.

Between Logan griping that at this rate he’d never get the chance to use his new credit card on things _he_ could enjoy while Laura and Brian bolted for opposite ends of the store, Jean felt like she was being stretched in every direction at once. But even that wasn’t the worst part. Laura came back first, holding about six different boxes of Legos, and then Brian ran up with an armload of plastic guns. That was the breaking point for Logan.

“ _A’right, enough a’ready!_ ” he bellowed at them, and a split second later some little boy hung off the side of his mother’s shopping cart and caused it to ram directly into the feral mutant’s side.

Jean barely even saw it happen, let alone had time to react and stop him, as Logan roared in outrage and shoved the cart back. The woman and her son were both knocked to the floor while the cart bounced off a shelf, sending several items tumbling down as well. By some miracle he _hadn’t_ extended his claws, but his posture and heavy breathing left no doubt in Jean’s mind that they’d be released in two seconds or less. Faced with this, she cut her losses and got the three of them back to the truck.

* * *

 

The instant he got home, Logan tore away from the other three without helping to carry anything inside with him. It wasn’t out of spite or rudeness, though, but rather the fact that he was so overwhelmed it just didn’t occur to him that he should. Instead, he proceeded to round up every ice cube in the kitchen and dump them in his bathtub before filling it with water that was straight cold. His clothes were damp with sweat, forcing him to peel them off, and were then left in a heap next to the door.

Submerging himself after taking a breath and holding it, Logan welcomed the sensation of wetness against his skin that was frigid enough to burn. It was so jarring, so overpowering that his busy mind cleared out almost instantly, leaving just blissful pain and silence while bubbles escaped from his nose.

Logan shook his head roughly and sputtered for a moment once he raised his head again. Wiping his face clear but not opening his eyes, he stayed mostly in the water and shivered while listening to Jean, Brian and Laura settling things in Jean’s bedroom next door. Of course the kids weren’t talking, but his girlfriend was.

“You don’t need to be scared by what happened, okay, but I want you to remember it. When you both ran off like that, he couldn’t keep track of you, which is part of why he had an outburst. So, the next time all of us go out somewhere, I want you both to stay calm and not wander away. Okay?” They must’ve nodded, because Logan could hear the approving smile in her voice when she said “Good.”

He heard the cubs shuffling around in the room over, but Jean’s footsteps were definitely making their way over to his side of the wall. If he was honest, though, he didn’t want her looking at him right now. Her beautiful brown eyes were too forgiving, too full of love and kindness, and he didn’t deserve it after lashing out at innocent people for something that was entirely his own fault. It wasn’t on everyone around him that he just couldn’t get a fucking grip on himself and he knew it.

As the bedroom door was pushed open outside, Logan yanked up the plug and turned the shower on at full hot. Temperature extremes were grounding, and after a couple of seconds his skin misread “comfortable warmth” for “being incinerated.” He didn’t make a sound, though. Suffer in silence. Suffer in silence was a great rule, Logan thought, because if nobody else knew about it then they couldn’t use it to their advantage.

A gentle knock: “Logan? How are you feeling right now, are you a little better?”

“Busy,” he shouted back through the door, knowing he would choke on the words trying to lie to her by saying he was fine.

“Alright, but I want to talk to you, how much longer will you be in there?”

“Dunno.”

Even over the water beating into his scalp, Logan still caught her sigh. God dammit, she probably thought he was pissed at her. No. He could never be mad at Jeannie.

“Okay, then. Just come find me when you’re done.”

He couldn’t even force an answer to that, knowing he wouldn’t. She didn’t need him whining at her right now, when he could just as easily extend a claw and carve into his arm just to watch the blood swirl down the drain. Suffer in silence. Whether Logan was creating his very own suffering or letting the cruelty of the world take him down, he would always be in pain and he knew it. And silence… how could he have silence with himself unless he was alone? So now, he was completely free to provoke injury in the solitude of his bathroom. It would smell like blood for weeks, of course, but nobody’d be able to tell except him, anyway.

And the control…

Logan was in control of his own pain. He was in control of how alone he chose to be. There would be nobody else to witness these threads of weakness made manifest across his skin, and the wounds would be gone long before he encountered prying eyes.

He traced the patterns with his eyes even as they healed, rough marks of the letter “x” up his arms and across his chest that were never exactly the same size, or long and thin but very deep gouges straight through tendons and muscles until the points of his claws hit metal-clad bone. Logan didn’t want them to fix themselves, he wanted to mark himself, rip holes into his body so that he could watch his life drain away as the spray of water diluted the crimson. Or at the very least to cover himself in scar tissue until he was unrecognizable as what was supposed to be a human being.

Logan as a person - ha! His mind gave a cruel bark of laughter at that concept. He was an animal, or even less than an animal… maybe even less than nothing. He was what they’d built him into, a merciless weapon that could only cause pain and destruction in its wake. He could never escape that single, brutal fact, no matter how many medications Hank put him on or how many times Jean leaned into his kisses while whispering that she loved him. And how could she do that? There was nothing in him to love… he was undeserving of love…

Even knowing it would just patch itself over and wouldn’t have the outcome he wanted, when that thought hit him Logan couldn’t resist the sick joy of letting his claws dig into his own neck.

* * *

 

After Logan had been in the bathroom for more than an hour, Jean finally got worried enough to stop caring if he wanted to be alone and just went in. Behind the curtain, the trails of blood draining away as several wounds finished closing themselves on his body were unmistakable. Unfortunately, she wasn’t at all surprised by this, or by the annoyed look he flashed at her from being interrupted.

“You really need to stop doing this,” she insisted, switching off the water and pulling him onto the bathmat so that she could start rubbing his skin dry with a towel. “Hurting yourself whenever you feel upset about something doesn’t make it go away.”

Logan probably would’ve started arguing if she hadn’t made sure he could hear the love and concern in her voice, so as it was he remained silent. Jean couldn’t help but sigh. He looked so tired and defeated, as if life had finally beaten him down and he was just waiting for it to land the finishing blow. Actually, that was probably _exactly_ how he felt right now.

Jean watched him throw on a pair of boxers and his sweats, which meant he had no intention of leaving his bedroom until at least tomorrow at lunchtime. She couldn’t really blame Logan for that that, though. Today had been exhausting for him. When he sat on the edge of his mattress she settled beside him, taking his hand in hers.

“I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you, baby. You were right. We shouldn’t have gone out with you feeling that way.”

“Ain’t your fault I can’t fuckin’ control myself, darlin’,” he grunted, leaning his weight slightly into her side. “An’ it ain’t like I ever feel good to begin with. Not your fault.”

Jean slipped her arms around Logan’s neck and pulled him over gently, lowering his head so that she could rest her cheek in his fluffy hair. Even if she hadn’t been a telepath, it was painfully obvious how bad he felt right now, and that made her ache for him. There was no logical reason for him to hate himself the way he did, but the absurd amount of damage that had been done to his mind had been festering for decades. If there was such a thing as a psychiatric hospital for mutants that wasn’t just a front for similar unethical experiments, and if there was any way to keep Logan contained, he would have probably been put in one after they rescued him and stayed as a patient for several years.

As it was, such a place didn’t exist, which meant that Logan would probably stay sick for even longer than the duration of his torture at Alkali Lake. Jean was doing her best, and the medications were helping so far, but for the time being she had no means of treating him that were more than mildly effective. Aside from taking his meds like he was supposed to, Logan also seemed unwilling or unable to make the effort at looking for a better way to help him, and if he couldn’t actually try to get better then nothing would work until he did.

Feeling suddenly helpless, Jean stroked her fingertips through his facial hair briefly before gently lifting his face for a kiss. It was just a light one, trying to help Logan feel at least a little comforted. Contact between them only broke for a moment before he was pressing his face back to hers, needing her. She could sense everything rolling from him, heightened by their skin touching, that he desperately needed her like this so that his mind would turn off and just let him _feel_ for a while without thinking too hard about it.

Well, okay, if that was what he needed right now, Jean was more than fine offering it.

Slipping a hand under the waistband of Logan’s sweatpants told her just how badly his depression and anxiety were getting the better of him - he was only halfway there. Normally he’d be ready to go almost before they started kissing. But it wasn’t his fault, and he needed this, and heck, Jean needed it, too. Besides, a few good strokes was all it took before he was dragging his palms across her skin and doing his best to yank off her clothes without destroying them. (She’d lost several pairs of underwear and a sweater that way already, to say nothing of when he got impatient enough to just use his claws.)

Despite the fact that it was supposed to be helping him, between his sense of fairness and superhuman stamina Logan got her off three times with just his hands and mouth before even using his cock. Jean almost gasped herself at the relief surging through him then, slipping his engorged member into her and pausing to let her adjust. In just a short time, a little over two months since they’d become romantically involved, they’d had an insane amount of sex, but he still always held still at the very beginning. There was too much of him not to and he never wanted her to be uncomfortable or in pain because of it. Jean knew that Logan really did love having her feel him like this, though, and that he just couldn’t enjoy it unless he made it mind-blowing for her every time.

Which, actually, it was. Even without knowing exactly how old he was, it had been many decades more than he looked and his experience showed. He knew perfectly what he was doing, all the right spots to hit and which combinations of position with speed would drive her crazy. Like most things he did, Logan was obsessive when it came to sex, settling for nothing less than perfection from himself. He even told Jean one time that he couldn’t get off unless he got her to climax first.

After emptying himself into her twice (and making sure she orgasmed both times as well), they just curled together in silence, not caring that they were sticky with each other’s body fluids. Given that she could sense his emotions very strongly, Jean only thought it was fair that Logan got hers too, so she allowed her mind to lightly project at his. He relaxed a lot after that; this was her favorite version of him, cuddled up on the bed around her body in the afterglow.

Because these moments were when all his fears quieted and his brain stopped overthinking the _why_ of everything, just feeling safe and content because he loved her and she loved him.


	10. Self-Interrupted

_...curled up on the concrete floor, but at least he’s able to roll away from the puddle of his own sick before all his strength leaves. How long has it been, now? How many days, how many weeks in this hell? How many years…? Nothing has changed by his actions or lack thereof. There are no windows to tell him when days or nights change. The white mercury rods in the ceiling are on and buzzing all the time, never giving him the slightest relief he could find in darkness._

_How long has it been, now?_

_He doesn’t know. More than a year, because he’d been using his inner clock to keep track of each 24-hour cycle. But then they finally broke him, made him beg, peeling off skin and jamming instruments into his body until couldn’t fight back anymore. After the first time they got him screaming and crying under their knives, he’d stopped counting, because it doesn’t matter anymore and he knows it. Nobody is coming for him. Nobody knows he’s gone or that he exists at all._

_How long has it been, now?_

_He doesn’t remember his name. Some distant thought lodges into his mind: it’s written on the metal tags. So with a weak and trembling hand he flips one over to look, but the tiny shapes scratched into the aluminum mean nothing to him. It’s written on the metal tags, but he can’t even decipher these odd symbols anymore._

_How long has it been, now?_

_His bones always hurt. Lying on concrete with no means of comfort or real rest is taking its toll; there’s metal on his bones, some kind of poisonous coating, and he hasn’t been fed since they threw him in here. He knows it’s not supposed to hurt like this, that he’s been dealing with the poison perfectly well for years until this. But he has no food. There’s a four-liter bucket of water in one corner, but that’s as much as he has for a week (he thinks; maybe it’s a little longer or shorter than a week). It tastes like rust, but that’s all he’s got anymore._

_How long has it been, now?_

_He doesn’t know what he is. The soldiers say “weapon.” The doctors say “it.” Stryker says “him” or “wolverine.” What’s an it? What’s a him? What’s a wolverine? He barely even knows what a weapon is anymore - the things they use to control him, punching red holes in his body with loud noises that smash into his ears and hurt almost as much as the wounds. Or the three long blades in each arm. They ache and throb, like splinters that are too deep to pull from his skin but a thousand times worse. And when he tries to use them on the soldiers, they skin him alive and take turns practicing with their throwing knives._

_How long has it been, now?_

_The other voice in his head screams, too, but not because it hurts like him or is scared like him. No… the other voice is rage incarnate, bellowing that he should get up, he needs to fight, he needs to_ do something _and not just give in. The other voice has always been there, before he was even taken. It’s always told him what needs to be done… but now, it’s too late anymore. He’s already given up…_

_How long has it been, now…?_

* * *

 

Logan came back to the real world and realized Jean was jostling him awake by his shoulders. Not knowing where he was at first, he pushed her away and scrambled back - only to fall over the side of the bed and hit the floor, hard. But it wasn’t a concrete floor and there was no bucket of rusty water in the corner, the light in the room was golden sunbeams pooling on the wood through a window.

This was Logan’s room, in the mansion. He was Logan. He could read those letters, L-O-G-A-N, and even write them on paper knowing what they meant. He’d been here for almost eight months, calling himself Logan and hearing others say it when they wanted to gain his attention. They labeled certain foods in the fridge with a marker to write out Logan, his name, so that nobody will eat it for him.

A marker… markers had something to do with his skin…? Wait, what?

Looking at the underside of his right forearm, he encountered his own barely-legible handwriting in black ink: **_I AM LOGAN, AND THEY DON’T OWN ME._ ** Oh, yeah. Jean made him write that on his arm every morning after it got washed off in the shower as a reminder that he really was a human being.

But was he?

The second consciousness, the Wolverine, had been very quiet for about a month and a half because of the medications, but Logan was fairly certain that people didn’t have voices in their head telling them what to do like he did. He wasn’t sure he was a human being, though, and he didn’t think other people thought he was supposed to be one, either.

Jean crouched in front of him and he looked up to meet her eyes. Logan couldn’t help the jolt of fear along his spine when she reached for his hands, trembling like a beaten dog. At least he didn’t completely fall apart at the seams and start crying in front of her, but when he tried to talk his voice was a pathetic whimper that shook almost as much as his body.

“They know… know I’m here, right?”

“What? Who?”

“Dunno… somebody. Anybody. They know I’m here, right?”

“Logan…”

Unable to control himself, his hands shot out to grab her upper arms so hard she’d get bruises. His heart was pounding in his chest, only making him feel more afraid, and no matter how much he breathed there just wasn’t enough air in his lungs.

“They gotta know!” he shouted, clenching his fingers even tighter and not seeing the wince of pain across her face. “Somebody’s gotta know, could happen again an’ nobody knew… didn’t know I was there… just… can’t… I… fuck, I… ain’t no way to prove where I am. Don’t got somethin’ to say I’m real. Maybe… fuck… I’m here, right? I’m here an’ I’m real? Nobody knew… I… I… I-I-I-”

Logan stuttered until a sharp pain lanced his sternum, intense enough that he collapsed sideways and wrapped his arms around his chest. It was so excruciating that he couldn’t talk anymore or even breathe, just repeatedly suck air inward because it hurt too much to exhale. He forgot what he’d been saying right then, or who was talking to him, or where he was; it was all pushed out by the single thought of _Oh my god, it hurts!_

Gasping for breath, Logan’s vision was darkening at the edges and swimming for a moment, and the next thing he knew he was on his back staring at the infirmary ceiling. There was someone’s hand in his, while the other was clutched tightly by smaller fingers that carefully avoided the pulse oximeter, making his palms start to sweat. There were electrodes stuck to his forehead and EKG leads on his bare chest, though his sweatpants were still on.

“The hell?” Logan mumbled, swallowing to clear the sticky feeling in his mouth. Rolling his head to either side, his left hand was gripped by Brian and Laura while his right was wrapped around Jean’s. All three of them looked worried, but his girlfriend especially so. “What happened, darlin’?”

“You were talking and growling in your sleep so I tried to wake you up, I thought it was a nightmare. But you fell off the bed and had an intense panic attack. This is the worst one I’ve seen you have in a while.”

“Felt like a harpoon went through my chest,” Logan groaned. The pain was gone, now, but its intensity had jarred him. “That weren’t no panic attack, baby.”

“Severe anxiety can cause physical symptoms in rare cases. You were projecting when it happened, so I know how it felt for you, but there’s nothing wrong with your heart. Hank ran a whole battery of tests while you were out.”

“Time is it?”

“Almost lunch,” Jean replied, giving his fingers a light squeeze. “What were you dreaming about?”

“Uh… the lab. Just lyin’ there an’ couldn’t do nothin’, but this was before my brain went to hide so I weren’t strapped down yet. An’ just thinkin’ how nobody knew I was there. Nobody lookin’ for me. Didn’t even know who I was.”

She nodded, letting him sit up and starting to pull the electrodes and leads from his skin. “When you woke up, you kept saying something like that and asking if ‘they’ knew where you were and if you were real. I had no idea what you meant.”

“Yeah, I mean… didn’t have nobody who gave a damn ’bout me back then. Course, legally I ain’t real. Don’t got a car license or a birth certificate or nothin’.”

Logan hadn’t intended that to be a joke, so he was a little annoyed that Jean chuckled until she realized he wasn’t being funny. Actually, now that he thought about it, lacking any documents really bothered him. All the kids who’d been pulled from the lab with him were having birth certificates and everything else created for them because there was enough info in their files, but he still had nothing after eight months with the X-Men. How was that, exactly?

He didn’t wait for her to pick up on his thoughts, though, and just told her exactly what was crossing his mind. Which probably wasn’t the best idea, actually, because he couldn’t keep his bitterness in check.

“Thanks, Jeannie. Thanks for laughin’ at me. An’ you fuckin’ wonder why I don’t believe you when you say I’m s’posed to be a human bein’.”

Not sticking around to hear her response, Logan yanked the rest of the wires away from his body and left the infirmary. He went to his bedroom to throw on some real clothes and his boots, then left the building altogether and climbed a different tree from the one he normally sat in. Actually, it was on the opposite side of the estate from his favorite perch, but that was fine - it meant people were less likely to find him here.

Logan bit the end off a cigar and lit up. It was one of the cheap ones, the kind he normally just chewed instead of smoked, but he didn’t really care at the moment. He chewed the cheap ones to satisfy an oral fixation and keep from grinding his own molars into powder, though right now he needed the taste of tobacco instead of something to bite down on.

_*Logan?*_

_The fuck you want, Chuck? I ain’t in the mood._

_*This likely won’t come as any surprise to you, but I know what happened this morning and simply wished to express my concern.*_

_Whatever. You want somethin’? Just wanna be by myself right now._

_*I understand, and I only need a few moments. During your rescue this most recent time, between information Dr. Grey retrieved from Sabertooth and electronic files we believe we’ve discovered most of the facilities operated by this particular group. We are already making final preparations to eliminate these laboratories, and I thought hearing this would help you feel more at ease.*_

_Yeah, right. I ain’t gonna relax none until every last one’a the fuckers is rottin’ in Hell. Includin’ Sabertooth._

_*I understand your feelings, Logan, but I need you to realize that without Sabertooth’s help we would never have found you. Hank has also made some amount of progress with him in the last few days.*_

_Like I give a shit,_ Logan snarked. _Bastard sold me out in the first place, an’ he attacked Jeannie. Don’t matter how much fuckin’ “progress” he makes. I don’t want him here an’ I ain’t puttin’ up with his shit._

_*Once Mr. Creed has gained a stable enough mindset, he will return to The Vault for two years.*_

_That’s it? Ain’t long enough._

_*He will be there so that there is a secure environment for him to recover in, where it will be more difficult for him to harm others. It will also serve the purpose of protecting him from_ you, _Logan. He truly is showing signs of putting in effort.*_

 _You know what he did to her, an’ now you’re_ protectin’ _him? The fuck’s wrong with you, Chuck? He’s gotta get punished!_

_*Sabertooth is not dissociative like you are, and may also not meet the criteria for PTSD, but that does not mean he isn’t suffering problems of his own. He is very nearly as mentally ill as you, Logan. Some form of military training combined with psychological conditioning was used to alter his mind, so he is unable to control his most savage and violent urges. The issue is not that he doesn’t wish to stop himself from perpetrating such heinous acts, but rather that his ability to control his instincts has been taken completely out of the equation for him. Mr. Creed is, to put it simply, brainwashed to be a serial killer.*_

_An’ that’s s’posed to make me feel better or somethin’? He hurt Jean! He fuckin’... if I weren’t there to pull him off’a her, he… Jesus fuckin’ Christ, Chuck. He came here lookin’ for me, an’ figured out she was close to me. An’ so he did it to her on purpose… did it ’cause he figured out I love her. Bastard just wants to hurt me, an’ that’s all there is to it._

_*Are you quite finished?*_

_Prob’ly not._

_*For the moment, at least?*_

_Sure. Whatever._

_*The thought has occurred to me, given that you have recently begun an intimate relationship with Dr. Grey, that your psychotherapy should be continued by someone else. The closeness you share is not conducive to a professional and unbiased approach to treatment.*_

_Tough shit. I don’t trust nobody else with my mind, fuckin’ thing’s broken enough a’ready._

_*If you would allow me to finish, I was about to suggest that you simply have daily sessions with me for an hour or two. I understand you harbor a great deal of guilt because you assume you’re placing undue stress on her. This way, given the addition of Laura and Brian to your lives, she will be relieved of that responsibility over your mental health and you will have no reason to be angry with yourself every time you see her look tired.*_

Incredibly, the touch of humor in that statement actually drew a smirk from him.

_A’right, point taken… ah, shit! I fuckin’ yelled at her, too. God dammit, Chuck, first thing you gotta make me learn is to stop bein’ such a jackass to her… Jesus, what the hell’s she doin’ with me, anyway?_

_*Logan-*_

_Keep almost clawin’ her in my sleep an’ unloadin’ all’a my bullshit on her, all Jeannie ever does is listen to me bitchin’ and moanin’..._

_*Logan, you-*_

_Fuckin’ pathetic. An’ I don’t got nothin’ to give back to her, neither-_

_*LOGAN.*_

The mental shout of his name was like being hit in the face with a sledgehammer, knocking him clean out of the tree. He was surprised his condensed weight didn’t leave a crater.

_That ain’t funny._

_*It wasn’t intended to be, I assure you. But that train of thought is the first thing you must deal with before you confront anything else. Habitually indulging negative thoughts may not seem like it is your most pressing issue, but in truth it’s one of your most self-destructive compulsions. Every time I sense that it is beginning, I will interrupt it and remind you, but you must also learn to interrupt it on your own. Now… consider your first session concluded, and go speak with Jean before you lose your nerve.*_

_Don’t lose my nerve._

_*Of course not, Logan. As I said, go speak with her.*_

He nodded, brushing debris and dead leaves from his shirt and out of his thick hair before starting to leave the woods. A light breeze stopped him, carrying three scents. Hank, that bitch Emma. Why was Hank outside? He _never_ left his lab except the few times he remembered to be hungry… oh. Because Hank was a doctor, and because Emma was the only one besides Jean who had telekinesis. Which was required to keep Sabertooth in check.

Snarling angrily, Logan made no attempt to disguise his presence and stormed over to the trio. He stopped about seven feet from them in a clearing, though none of them were surprised to see him; Hank and Sabertooth could smell him, and Emma was a telepath, after all.

“Tryn’a make sure I get in a workout today, furball?” Logan spat, cracking his knuckles loudly before letting his claws slide free.

“Actually, I’m currently ambulating my patient as part of his treatment-”

“Spare me!” he roared, tensing as adrenaline born of rage began seeping into his veins. His eyes turned to Sabertooth, who was wearing a mocking leer of jagged fangs. “Any last words?”

“You don’t even know how to kill me, Jimmy,” the brute snickered. “A’ready tried a bunch’a times an’ you ain’t gotten it right, yet…”

“Boys, please,” Emma interjected, her voice insufferably patronizing as she used her powers to throw them both onto their backs and pin them. “You _must_ learn to get along and play nicely.”

Logan just roared, furious that she was holding him down. No matter how he strained not a single muscle would flex.

“I smell her on you, Jimmy,” Sabertooth continued. Even without being able to look, Logan could feel the sneer under his words. “You still want her even though I got there first. That’s just like you, too. You always need my leftovers, ain’t good enough to get nothin’ for yourself.”

“Emma?” Hank muttered.

“Of course.” Logan heard Sabertooth’s heart and lungs suddenly drop to a much slower rate - she’d knocked the fucker out. “Now then, if I let you go, do you promise to keep your hands to yourself?”

“Fuck you.”

“I’ll take that as a yes. Run along, now, _Jimmy._ ”

“Call me that again an’ I’ll cut your fuckin’ tongue out,” Logan snarled, but was nonetheless allowed to walk away without further harassment from her.

While tracking Jean’s scent, Logan passed the kitchen and was so intent on finding his girlfriend that he was knocked on his ass by Laura and Brian tackling him. His claws flicked out reflexively before he’d even landed, but to his complete shock they weren’t attacking - the pair were _hugging_ him.

“Uh… you two wanna get off me?” Logan grunted, frowning and trying to shake free. It didn’t take long for him to get fed up with them. “A’right, enough, let go’a my fuckin’ legs!”

They finally obeyed, though he had to raise his hackles and snarl to keep them from following him around. He really just didn’t have the patience for them right then. The scent caught his focus again, though, and found Jean at her bedroom desk researching something on her laptop. A knock on the doorframe caught her attention.

“Hey, Logan. How are you feeling?”

He hung his head guiltily and paced over to her. “Look, Jeannie, I-”

“It’s okay,” she interrupted, pulling him in for a long and tender kiss. “I know, baby. It’s okay.”

Her gentle smile drew a similar expression from him in return. He didn’t deserve the love in her eyes and he knew it, but damn it was nice.

“Thank you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The debilitating chest pain Logan has during his panic attack is a real thing that can happen. In fact I had one exactly like it once, minus the passing out at the end, but it was so bad I ended up in the emergency room because it hurt too much to breathe out and I couldn't even talk or stay standing.


	11. Choosing Discomfort

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just to get this out here, Sabertooth in this chapter uses a slur against a group of people. I AM PART OF THAT GROUP OF PEOPLE. I'm not putting the word in the narrative to bash a group of people I'm part of, but rather because Sabertooth is a fucking bastard and it seemed like a word he would use if a PG-13 rating didn't cut him off at the knees. I'm not trying to be offensive, just realistic to this character's vile personality, so if you are offended you can feel free to get over yourself at any time.

“Jeannie?”

“What?”

“My face look funny to you?”

She looked in briefly and frowned at him, but Logan only saw it through the mirror, not turning away. Something seemed just _off_ to him this morning, and he had no idea what it was.

“Why are you worried about your face?” his girlfriend wondered, turning his head with her fingers so she could closely inspect him.

“Dunno, just don’t look right somehow.”

Her fingertips traced lightly over his cheeks, making his skin tingle. Then she nodded. “Your temples are turning gray, baby. That’s all.”

“The fuck?” Logan grimaced. “How’d that happen?”

He pulled away and looked back at the mirror, finding that yes, his temples were indeed starting to lighten. But it really _did_ seem to be his face, too - before, he’d looked like he could’ve been anywhere from 25 to 33 years old, but now he appeared to be about 46. What was happening to him?

“I can have Hank run tests if you want,” Jean offered. “It might have something to do with the chemicals they injected you with.”

“Because chemicals sure as hell’d make me put on ten years in two weeks,” he muttered sarcastically.

“It could be stress from having two kids.”

“That a joke, darlin’?”

“Almost,” Jean shrugged. “But high levels of stress have been proven to exacerbate the effects of aging.”

“Feel like that would’a been showin’ itself before now,” Logan argued. “An’ Brian might even get took off’a my hands today. Gotta go with him to meet Sabertooth.”

“Well, then clearly you weren’t paying attention to Hank very well, because he and I agreed that Brian will still be with us until Creed is released from The Vault.”

“Jesus, I got two more fuckin’ years with that brat?” Logan grumbled.

“Probably more,” Jean corrected, giving him _the look_ for insulting one of the cubs. “He’ll only be evaluated in two years, and if they find him too unstable he’ll be held for another year until his next eval.”

“Then why the hell am I doin’ this? Can’t Hank take Brian by himself?”

“Brian needs someone he trusts, and he doesn’t know Hank very well. I would go if… well, anyway, he trusts you, so you have to.”

Logan’s frustration drained at that. Of course he needed to do it, because it wouldn’t be fair to insist Jeannie face Sabertooth. He didn’t want that prick anywhere near his girlfriend, ever.

“Yeah. I’ll go with Brian for you, darlin’. Won’t even bitch ’bout it after, neither.”

That earned him a small smile. “It’s okay, Logan. You’re free to bitch about Creed as much as you want.”

“Nah, I know you don’t wanna hear ’bout him. Still wanna gut the fucker again.”

“You gutted him?”

Logan didn’t understand her surprise.

“Yeah, in the woods when I came back. Ruined one’a my favorite shirts from all that blood…” He trailed off, watching her brown eyes starting to get glassy and feeling his own eyes widen. He immediately reached out and pulled her into his chest, holding her as tight as he could without hurting her. “Don’t do this, baby, didn’t mean to make you… I mean… he ain’t gettin’ near you, it’s okay, he even looks at you funny an’ I’mma force-feed him his own balls.”

Feeling Jean start to tremble a little, Logan rubbed her back with his palm and pressed kisses into her hair. Had she already been upset because of his complaining, or was it when he brought up the shirt? Probably the shirt, he decided, because he’d had to wrap her up in some of his dirty clothes before taking her inside. Jesus, he was such a stupid bastard. What was that word Hank and Chuck always used for him when he was starting to lose his shit? Triggers? Yeah, he needed to be careful and not trigger his girlfriend, because what Sabertooth did probably wouldn’t completely leave her no matter what she did.

Of course, since she wasn’t a basket-case like him, Jean only needed a couple of minutes to get back to normal instead of an hour like Logan usually did. “Try to stay calm down there, okay? You really need to listen to what Hank tells you to do. Remember, this is for Brian.”

“Got it.”

“Okay.” Jeannie rubbed up and down his arms with her palms, smiling a little in that way that made him intensely aware of all the nerve endings in his skin. “I’ll have Laura with me until you come back, I’m going to talk with her a little more about appropriate social interaction during English class.”

“Grrmph,” Logan snorted, shaking his head. “School’s been goin’ on five days an’ she’s a’ready clawin’ everyone that gets too close…”

“And you’re surprised?” she teased. Then she gave a light clap to his shoulder. “Come on, there’s a very excited little boy waiting for you in the TV room.”

Still grumbling, Logan gave her a final squeeze and stalked down to the ground floor. True to Jean’s words, Brian was parked on the couch directly across from the TV watching some documentary about the holocaust. The scene made him feel uncomfortable, because even without remembering his childhood, he suddenly knew that Sabertooth’s fascination with intentional cruelty had also started early on. This wasn’t a good sign.

Logan cleared his throat loudly, catching his nephew’s attention. Brian flashed a grin of spiked incisors, jumping up from the couch with a half-eaten Snickers bar gripped in one fist and rushing out into the hall. He was already frighteningly reminiscent of Logan’s brother, with a certain strength to his body despite being a relatively skinny kid, as well as unnatural grace to his already broadening frame. Brian hadn’t carved his fingernails into points like Sabertooth usually did, but his own retractable claws were coated in adamantium and that more than made up for it. It really made Logan wonder about the whole “nature versus nurture” debate that Jeannie had described to him once.

“A’right, kid, you gotta remember to be still,” he grunted as they walked towards the elevator. “Still an’ quiet. Your dad ain’t like me, he don’t got any problems with hurtin’ you if he feels like it.”

Brian nodded, stuffing the rest of the candy bar into his mouth and smearing chocolate across his face and hand as a result. Maybe this had to do with their DNA, but Logan couldn’t help but notice that neither of those two kids really acted their age. Brian was always jumping around, somehow causing a ruckus despite not saying a word, and generally behaving like he was 5 years old instead of 11. Laura had those extremely childish moments as well, but for the most part was completely silent and brooding like a cynical adult. They definitely had hallmarks of their parentage, but it seemed too exaggerated somehow.

Well, no shit, Logan realized - they grew up in a lab and had no chance of having normal personalities now. Brian would struggle with (and ultimately lose control over) his brutal nature, taking nothing seriously beyond the art of killing but enjoying nothing outside of inflicting violence. Laura would become pessimistic and even more withdrawn than she already was, never giving herself the opportunity to find comfort or joy in anything because she thought the entire world was out for her blood.

_Jesus. Gonna end up just like me an’ Sabertooth… ain’t there some way to break them outta that mold? Deserve better’n what I got outta life._

Making a mental note to ask Jeannie about that later, Logan forced the thoughts away and hesitantly entered the infirmary. Brian stuck close by, almost behind him, and for once actually seemed intimidated by the brutal monster waiting for them. Emma and Hank were there, of course, but Logan almost gagged on the stink of the kid’s fear and suddenly realised his girlfriend had been right to insist he go.

“Guess this’s him?” Sabertooth grunted, jerking his chin at Brian. “An’ bein’ babysat by Jimmy. Kinda fittin’ job for you, runt.”

Logan tilted his head slightly to the left and narrowed his eyes, but didn’t actually glare or summon a growl. He just folded his arms across his chest and deliberately placed himself between Brian and Sabertooth as an obviously protective gesture.

“Brian, this is your father, Victor,” Hank butted in. “You’ll still be with us for a few years until he’s recovered, but we’re going to make sure you can see him often.”

“Hmph, leavin’ you with your Uncle Jimmy for now,” Sabertooth snarked, directly addressing his son. “Gonna hafta get all the pansy-ass things he teaches you back out after.”

Good god, Logan hoped that label wouldn’t stick. He really hated being called “Jimmy” or even by his real first name; actually, now that he thought about it, he hated being addressed as anything besides “Logan” or “Wolverine.”

Brian looked up at Logan, his gray eyes wide and questioning, but Logan just shrugged. It wasn’t _him_ who needed to bond with Sabertooth, after all.

“Why ain’t he sayin’ nothin’?” Sabertooth demanded when Brian only stared and remained quiet.

“He’s still adapting to his environment. It’s not uncommon after such trauma, especially in children. It could take months or even a year for Brian to begin expressing himself verbally,” Hank answered in a calm tone of voice.

“Okay,” the vicious brute sneered, “an’ how come he ain’t interested in bein’ near me? Just clingin’ to Jimmy over there…”

“’Cause he knows you’re a dickless fuck-stick?” Logan suggested hotly, trying not to tense up at his… ugh, he didn’t even want to think it, _brother’s_ stupid nickname for him. “An’ that you ain’t interested in bein’ his dad at all?”

“Get fucked, runt.”

“Bet I get laid more often’n you, you vile piece’a shit-”

“A- _hem,_ ” Hank cleared his throat loudly. “This is far from productive, gentlemen.”

“It ain’t? Damn, really thought I was gettin’ somewhere just now,” Logan spat with a heavy dose of sarcasm. “Besides, you know I ain’t wrong, furball. Bastard ain’t interested in the kid.”

“It really matter if I ain’t interested?” Sabertooth suddenly roared, his yellow talons sliding free. “Just gonna be locked up for the rest’a my life, ain’t gonna see him no more anyway once you faggots toss me back over to SHIELD.”

“If you take your treatment seriously, Mr. Creed, you will eventually be released under your own recognizance,” Hank corrected, “and from there you will be allowed to gain full custody of your son. And although he was far from diplomatic about the topic, Logan has something of a point. Do you even _wish_ to pursue a familial relationship with Brian? Please be honest, we won’t force you if you would rather have him remain in our care.”

“He does want his son,” Emma interjected. “But he’s too proud to admit it in front of his brother. He also doubts his ability to look after Brian. Oh, and by the way, _Jimmy-_ ” Logan hissed angrily and fought to keep his claws in. “-before you enjoy yourself too much over there, Victor is still mourning the bond he used to have with you. He just wants his baby brother to come back to him.”

As one, Logan and Sabertooth both snarled at her, the sounds almost identical. Not that he’d ever wondered to begin with, but this only drove home more why his girlfriend hated the bitch. She took joy from others’ discomfort… let’s see how she liked it, then. He suddenly gave her a nasty smirk.

“Y’know, Emma, weren’t gonna say nothin’ until a moment like this where I can enjoy it more, an’ now you given me one. But them walls upstairs ain’t as thick as you think. In just the last month, there’s been five fights with Scooter ’bout your weddin’, least one ’bout you not wantin’ kids even though he does, an’ two or three at least from him gettin’ home after missions an’ not talkin’ to you ’cause he just goes to sleep… an’ all’a those nights you didn’t get nothin’ from him in bed, neither.”

Sabertooth grunted and snickered from across the room, eyeing him: “You serious ’bout all that?”

“Hundred p’rcent,” Logan leered. He truly hated his brother, but torturing Emma Frost was just too damn fun to pass up and he wasn’t likely to get another opportunity like this. Even Brian was grinning now. “Plus, half the time she an’ Slim get it on, I smell her at breakfast next mornin’ an’ she ain’t even satisfied. Yeah, you keep lookin’ at me like that, you sadistic fuckin’ cunt. You do anythin’ to me an’ Jeannie’ll make sure your brains’re scrambled eggs that got mixed by a chainsaw.”

Emma’s smooth expression betrayed nothing, but he could smell the humiliation and disgust rolling from her skin. That just made his cruel grin widen; everything he said was true and she knew it.

 _Course she knows it,_ Logan thought to himself. _Heh. She’s the one who ain’t gettin’ off, after all…_

For once, Hank didn’t immediately try to intervene. Logan could tell it was because he was amused (though he’d never admit it), but also from his relief that the brothers had finally found a (highly inappropriate) way of getting along at last. After a few moments, though, he did put them back on track.

“Alright, enough, all of you. Logan, can you…?”

He grunted disagreeably, but at a gesture from the doctor’s blue paw he obediently paced forward a few feet. Brian hesitantly followed, still obviously nervous about getting close to such a powerful and dangerous beast, as well as Logan’s hostile body language and scent putting him off. But Logan just couldn’t relax around Sabertooth, not for Brian or anyone else.

Not after what his brother did to Jean.

* * *

 

Logan almost jumped out of his skin that night in the cafeteria. As always, he’d chosen the back corner where he could clearly see all the windows and doors, with Jean to his right and the two cubs on the other side of the table. Ororo sat down with them as well, which he expected, because she and Jean were best friends, and everything just seemed typical.

Until Brian.

“Uncle Jimmy, why do you hate my dad?”

Logan instantly froze, forgetting to even breathe with his mouth hanging open and his fork halfway raised with a huge clump of mashed potatoes and beef gravy slowly about to fall back off onto his plate. Of course Brian’s and Laura’s unnatural silence was on his mind a lot, especially when he had to interact with them (mostly because Jean forced him to), but somehow it had never really occurred to him that they would eventually begin to talk. It took him several long and awkward moments to regain himself.

“Uh… what?”

Watching his nephew shifting uncomfortably, Logan remembered his food and shoveled it into his mouth while he tried to come up with an answer. It didn’t help that Brian’s steel-colored eyes were burning holes into his hazel.

“Why do you hate my dad?”

Logan sighed and realized there was no way of getting around the truth. “’Cause he’s done a lotta bad shit to people. Did bad shit to me, too, long time ago. He likes it when somebody gets hurt ’cause’a him, an’ that ain’t okay. Likes killin’ people, too.”

“You kill people.”

Jesus fuck, could this get any more tense and uncomfortable? Logan swallowed hard.

“Yeah, I… killed people. But there weren’t no other choice, kid, you understand? If I didn’t do it, then other people’d get hurt. Don’t like killin’ people, don’t like hurtin’ them, neither. But sometimes there just ain’t anythin’ else I can do. Your dad ain’t never happy unless he’s hurtin’ an’ killin’ people. Likes watchin’ them bleed… I seen him do some real awful things, an’ I ain’t ever gonna be okay with what he did.”

Brian looked just about crushed, but still nodded. Logan hadn’t really expected to connect with the kid, but now he felt a stab of pity and sympathy. Truthfully, though, seeing how unhappy this description made his nephew feel, it actually made him a little less worried that the cub would turn out exactly like Sabertooth.

“It’s alright, Brian,” Ororo offered, resting one of her hands gently on the boy’s shoulder in an attempt at comfort. “No matter what your father does, you will always have a home here with us.” She gave Logan a pointed stare.

“Um, yeah,” he mumbled, not looking. “No matter what.”

 _Unless he_ does _turn out like this father… kid’s okay for now, I guess, but I ain’t ready to deal with him if he goes off the fuckin’ deep end like Victor. Shit. When the hell’d I get so fuckin’ soft to these cubs? That ain’t good, neither..._


	12. Fuckin' Sunshine

“Good morning, Logan,” Charles smiled as he stalked into the room.

“Chuck,” he acknowledged, closing the door behind him and considering one of the soft chairs before deciding to pace around the room as usual. “You gonna make me talk or just listen to my thinkin’ process?”

“I prefer you to express yourself out loud. It helps you become more comfortable with day-to-day conversations.”

“Grmph.” He shook his head and cracked his knuckles. “So… a’right, kid met his dad yesterday. Didn’t go _great,_ but it could’a gone a helluva lot worse, too, so… dammit, Victor got him fuckin’ callin’ me ‘Uncle Jimmy’ an’ I fuckin’ hate it.”

“I understand,” the professor nodded, pausing briefly to sip his tea. “But consider this. The nickname ‘Jimmy’ is an endearment that is only used by Mr. Creed. He wishes to annoy you, yes, but also because he longs for the close bond you once shared. He is desperate to foster some new threads of brotherhood between you, but isn’t sure how to go about doing it, so he continues to antagonize you. It’s quite a childlike form of sibling rivalry.”

“Pissin’ me off, Chuck.”

“Of course it does. But, please note that I use the term ‘childlike’ instead of ‘childish.’ There is a subtle difference, as ‘childish’ carries a negative connotation. I say ‘childlike’ instead because Victor’s life has been nearly as brutal as yours. He never fully learned what behavior is acceptable for a grown man.”

“Okay, so fuckin’ what?” Logan scoffed. “You want me to do the whole ‘supportive brother’ bullshit? I ain’t doin’ that, an’ you know it. Son of a bitch ain’t gonna get nothin’ from me but a swift kick in the ass. Hurt Jeannie, turned me in to them government bastards for the fuckin’ experiments, killed innocent people an’ laughed when he was doin’ it. I get nightmares’a him, Chuck, an’ he’s killin’ people just ’cause he wants to see them die…”

“I have no intention of forcing you to let your brother back into your life,” Professor Xavier assured him. Actually, it did help Logan feel slightly better to hear it out loud. “And I certainly can’t fault you for feeling the way you do about him, especially after you saw him harming someone close to you. My only request is that you make an effort to foster basic civil interaction, for Brian’s sake. I believe spending time with his son is emotionally beneficial to Mr. Creed, and even if he does not assume custody in the end, it may also be helpful to your nephew as well.”

Logan sighed. “Askin’ a lot from me, Chuck… Jesus. Don’t even like that kid an’ I still ain’t happy ’bout lettin’ him get near Victor.”

The professor had an infuriating smile that, while not malicious or unkind, was somewhere between patient and indulgent. It made him want to put his fists through the wall of the perfect little room.

“You need to let yourself care about them, Logan.”

“Yeah, I ain’t doin’ that,” he snapped.

“Even though you aren’t content with giving in to your fears.”

“Not scared.” It wasn’t _exactly_ a lie; Logan wasn’t scared, he was terrified almost to the point of pissing himself. Anything that got close to him was a way in for him to be hurt. “Just too much hassle, that’s all.”

Xavier sighed, though for some reason he looked almost… _sad._

“And yesterday when you expressed concern that Laura and Brian will fall into the same traps as you and Sabertooth? You were quite upset at the idea of them suffering the same way.”

“Yeah, I was there,” Logan growled. “An’... look, I ain’t thrilled ’bout anybody goin’ through the shit I did, that ain’t nothin’ too special.”

“I feel you should know that when I spoke with Brian and Laura yesterday, they’ve also been frustrated with the situation. They’re worried about _you,_ as well. Even knowing Mr. Creed now and having spent time with him, that young man is very aware of the fact that most of the paternal attention he receives comes from you. Simply explaining the difference between outright brutality and how killing may be a necessary evil has made an enormous impact on Brian, and he’s very interested in gaining your approval.”

“Excuse me?”

The professor ignored his surprise and continued. “Laura is also looking for your affection. She receives plenty from Jean, of course, which is fine. But she needs it from you as well. Laura knows she’s just like you, and she is unfortunately also aware of the pain you suffer day-to-day. She believes she’s destined for a similar depth of unhappiness.”

“That ain’t what I want for her,” Logan admitted before he could stop himself.

“I know that,” Charles nodded. “Of course Brian is your nephew, but he and Laura love you very much. They value your opinion and wish to make you feel proud of them, because you’re their father. And whether you like it or not, you need them just as much. Your view of the world is quite warped, allowing you to only notice the negative while positive details slip by. But they can show you a different side of life. It certainly isn’t an easy task to raise children. If you do, though, even with the countless uncertainties and frustrating moments, it would eventually become your most rewarding experience and your most precious memories.”

“Chuck, I ain’t… look, I know you an’ Jeannie been tellin’ me this ain’t true, but we gotta face the fuckin’ music here. I’m a horrible, horrible dad, an’ I know it. Don’t know how to talk to them, don’t know nothin’ ’bout kids. Jesus fuckin’ Christ, don’t even remember my own dad… only guy worse at this'n me’s Victor. Don’t that tell any’a you everythin’ you need to know ’bout my parentin’ skills?”

Professor Xavier nodded slowly.

“I see. That must mean that not only do you beat your children, but you refuse to feed them as well?”

“What? No!” Logan shouted. “I wouldn’t… god dammit, Chuck.”

“I _do_ agree, to a certain extent, that your experience with children is largely inadequate. However, you don’t lack the capacity to learn the necessary skills. It would also help, of course, if you spent time with them and actually became familiar with their personalities. It’s far too easy for you to assume that Brian is a copy of your bother and Laura is a copy of you, and while there was quite obviously some bio-engineering and genetic manipulation involved, there is still a second source that simply isn’t as readily apparent. Certainly, Brian is very loud and his forward-thinking is missing, but he also has a very easy charisma that Mr. Creed does not possess. Laura is silent and usually overthinks to the point of frustration like you, but she’s highly inquisitive where you simply dismiss your environment as hostile until it proves otherwise. They’re not exact replicas, Logan, and they need you to help mold them into adults.”

He offered a bitter laugh. “Right. ’Cause _I’m_ the best guy for that job when I ain’t even able to survive trips to the store. Bein’ a real adult… well, sure as hell ain’t me, anyway. They follow after me too much an’ they’re just gonna lose their shit at every little thing like I do.”

“You don’t have to perfect your relationship with your children immediately, Logan,” Charles pointed out, smiling gently. “Start with something simple for each of them - for instance, allow them to at least stay in the same room with you even if you’re not sharing a meal.”

Logan snorted and shook his head, but said nothing and let the professor continue.

“A very easy way would be to simply walk the grounds with them. You’re comfortable with the trees, and the outside world will be fascinating to Laura and Brian for some time. They may not even try speaking with you, either.”

“Hm.” He cracked his knuckles and stopped pacing briefly, but started again just seconds later. Even thinking about those two little hellions was giving him waves of anxiety. “You done with me yet, Chuck? Wanna be by myself for awhile…”

“You may go,” the professor ceded, apparently realizing Logan had hit his limit for the day, “but I want you to try and relax. Don’t be afraid to ask Jean for a dose of lorazepam if you feel unwell.”

“Yup,” Logan nodded before nearly sprinting from the room. He had absolutely no intention of taking that medication - it turned him into a walking corpse for several hours, and he didn’t enjoy being so vulnerable.

Relax? Laughable. He still hadn’t learned how to do it on his own without Jean around to help, but she was busy teaching until the afternoon. He needed her… dammit, he _needed_ her, but she wasn’t here. Or maybe she’d do what Chuck said, and pump him full of drugs. She’d done it before even though she knew how much he fucking hated Ativan…

 _No more drugs,_ Logan decided suddenly. _Throwin’ me off, all these meds would’a put a fuckin’ rhino down for the count an’ that’s what Hank makes me swallow every mornin’? Bullshit! I’mma stop takin’ them tomorrow._

* * *

 

Why was Jean still surprised by this?

No, really, she didn’t get it. There was no reason for Logan’s behavior to still shock her, but even by his standards this seemed a little… odd. Mainly because he wasn’t technically hurting himself or even bleeding, just crouched in the center of his bed like a trapped animal and staring as his claws slowly extended only to slide fully back in again. Jean almost seized with fear, though not because she was scared of her boyfriend hurting her. There was no telling what was going through his mind right now, but it was obviously torturing him and if she tried to look into his mind it could send him into a rage. Or, more probably, a full-on panic attack. No matter what, that wouldn’t be fun for either of them.

“What’s wrong, Logan?” Jean asked cautiously, not daring to take another step into the room. “Did something happen?”

“I just… I can’t… Jesus.” His eyes shined emerald with crippling fear. “Don’t wanna talk ’bout it, darlin’. Can I just… ain’t mad at you or nothin’, but I really gotta be by myself right now, baby.”

“Are you sure? I just want to help.”

He took a long breath through his nose. “Don’t wanna talk.”

“Okay,” Jean nodded, softly closing the door behind her and stepping out of her shoes. She climbed onto the mattress as well, pulling him down with her and feeling relieved when he immediately snuggled right up and burrowed his face into her hair. “It’s okay, Logan. We’ll take care of it.”

Gently pulling her slim fingers through her boyfriend’s thick hair, she felt him doze off in her arms and decided to let him sleep until dinner. His various illnesses took so much out of him, and it showed; by the end of each day he’d be shaking, he didn’t make eye contact with anyone most of the time, and he hadn’t woken up in the mornings with an erection since they’d had to recover him two weeks ago. The return of that trauma undermined several months’ progress as far as his mental health went, and if he wasn’t on the insane dosages of psychotropic meds Hank had come up with it was likely that Logan would’ve retreated completely to let Wolverine take over again.

Jean didn’t want him to have nightmares during one of his periods of rest. He was starting to sleep less and less, which wasn’t unexpected, but that didn’t mean it was a good thing. Closing her eyes, she gently reached into Logan’s mind and began threading his dreams with all sorts of pleasant thoughts. Sitting in the grass outside once the weather got warm enough that she didn’t need a jacket. That time she’d read to him on the couch until he drifted off. Hmm, this was actually making _her_ drowsy…

Logan’s breathing deepened, and when Jean opened her eyes she saw that his whole body had relaxed significantly. He needed any amount of love and comfort she could offer, but giving it and seeing him start to feel better was affirming for her, too. Even after he stumbled like this, she’d always pick him back up again for as long as it took until he overcame his mental illnesses. Even the smallest spark of hope in his beautiful hazel eyes was an enormous victory.

After their classes had ended, Laura and Brian both poked their heads into the room briefly, but Jean held a finger to her lips as an indication to be quiet and they both left again without waking Logan. As far as she could gather from his uncertainty and fear before he’d drifted off, Charles had said something about the kids that had triggered him.

Unlike many people, Logan’s problems with raising children weren’t caused by any selfish need to retain his own life or keep from being tied down - he felt responsible for Brian and Laura, and had from the instant he’d caught their scents. But not really knowing who he was, coupled with the ludicrous amount of trauma, meant he was so obsessed with the idea of teaching them perfectly and not screwing up _ever_ that just looking at them sent him flying into a panic attack. Logan couldn’t get over the notion that he wasn’t good enough and would ultimately let them down.

Jean knew that just having him at all did good for the two kids, but Logan remained unconvinced. He was afraid to believe he was good enough, afraid of being happy for once, because he could only see it ending badly for him. What a horrible way to live…

Logan jerked suddenly and took a brief step back into the waking world: “Jeannie…?”

“I’m here,” she answered, messing up his hair and then smoothing it back down again with her fingers.

“Dreamin’ ’bout you, darlin’... you keep on givin’ me good dreams?”

“Of course,” Jean smiled. “I know you’d rather dream about me.”

“Mm… yeah…” Logan nuzzled into her throat and pulled her closer. “Gonna prob’ly just sleep next couple’a days, baby.”

“Logan…” Jean started to protest, but he’d already fallen back into deep slumber.

She sighed quietly into his fluffy black mane (he needed a haircut soon). It was a well-documented symptom of major depression to have problems with sleep, either getting too much or not enough and often alternating between the two. Letting him just stay in bed for days on end, especially if he was left alone, wouldn’t help him at all.

 _*Professor?*_ Jean reached out.

_*Is something wrong?*_

_*How did the session go with Logan today?*_

She “listened” without interrupting as Charles gave her a summary. Actually, his idea about Logan patrolling the forested part of the estate with Laura and Brian sounded like an excellent activity to help him bond with them. _*Unfortunately, with disorders as severe as his, humans often require inpatient care for a certain amount of time and several years of outpatient therapy to overcome them. We have no such options for Logan, and although we may not like to admit it he could take decades to fully recover.*_

 _*I know,*_ Jean sighed. _*I’ve been thinking the same thing myself…*_

 _*How have you been feeling lately?*_ the professor questioned suddenly, not letting her finish the thought. _*I understand there was a recent incident with Sabertooth.*_

 _*It was nothing,*_ Jean insisted. _*And really I’ve been so concerned with Logan that I haven’t really thought about it.*_

_*I see… you certainly seem unhappy. Is it solely caused by his current emotional state?*_

_*I… yes,*_ she admitted. _*He’s in so much pain and there’s nothing I can do. Professor, he… I told you about the nature of his injuries, right?*_

 _*You have,*_ Xavier confirmed. _*I can understand your sadness at the scope of his desperation to escape his suffering.*_

 _*But?*_ Jean anticipated the word.

 _*I simply wish to remind you that Logan’s state of mind is not, and has never been, your fault. Until he realizes that he_ wants _to get better, he is unable to engage in or commit to treatment. We must do what we can in the meantime, and eventually he will understand that it’s possible for him to recover. And where having him is beneficial to Laura and Brian, having you is invaluable to Logan. Your relationship eases a great deal of his pain, so please don’t believe your efforts are useless.*_

_*Thank you, Professor.*_

The conversation was cut short when Jean felt Logan starting to move around. She watched him roll out of bed and stumble across the floor for his sweatpants.

“It’s almost time for dinner,” she informed him, indirectly trying to stop him from following through with his sleep-alone-for-days-on-end plan. Logan just grunted, scooping them off the floor and reaching to undo his belt. “It’s really nice outside, too. I was thinking we could go out and eat on the lawn.”

“You been talkin’ to Chuck.” It wasn’t a question, but he didn’t sound annoyed so much as exhausted. “Really don’t wanna do nothin’ right now, darlin’. Ain’t up for it. Just wanna lay down for a while…” _...an’ not get back up again,_ his brain finished.

“I know you don’t feel well, but trust me, it’ll be good for you,” Jean insisted, also getting up and gently hugging him from behind. He was getting the shakes again simply from the strain of being conscious; that was far from a good sign. “Fresh air and sunshine are often very potent antidepressants.”

“Don’t give a shit ’bout fuckin’ sunshine right now,” Logan grumbled. “Get it through the window if I wanted it.”

Jean slowly and tenderly turned him for a real embrace, causing him to drop the sweatpants to put his arms around her in return. He pressed his face into the crook of her neck, not crying, though there were a few tears that hit her skin. Logan was much too stubborn to completely break down unless he was so overwhelmed that he lost control, and really that was just as big of a problem as him down-talking himself all the time. Keeping everything buried like that was destroying him from the inside out.

Logan flinched at the sudden pounding on his bedroom door, but didn’t let go of Jean. He only nuzzled closer in like he was trying to escape by hiding in the spot where her neck met her shoulder.

“Come on in,” she called after a moment. She knew it was the kids, and Logan absolutely didn’t want to deal with them right now, but they didn’t really have much of a choice.

Brian and Laura burst into his nest, screeching to a stop almost immediately to stare at the trembling mutant in Jean’s arms. Brian cocked his head to one side, reminiscent of Logan’s and Victor’s own body language. “Uncle Jimmy, why are you sad?” Laura still said nothing, but both of her dark eyebrows had drawn together and she couldn’t have looked more like her father if she tried.

“Ain’t sad,” he lied, his deep voice muffled by Jean’s shirt and trembling slightly like his muscles. “Get lost.”

Of course, they didn’t obey the halfhearted grumble, and after she’d given them a slight nod of encouragement they both came over to hug onto him tightly with their thin arms.

Finally, Jean lifted Logan’s head from her shoulder with one hand while her other arm was still around his strong back. She planted a brief kiss on the end of his nose and a second on his mouth. “Come on, baby, let’s just take the two little gremlins outside with some ham sandwiches, okay?”

“Yeah, a’right,” he mumbled, apparently too scrambled to argue anymore about it. He nuzzled into her long hair for a moment, and she felt him breathe deeply to take in her scent. It was a very endearing habit of his and sometimes made her wish she could do the same. “I’m tryin’, Jeannie, really… just don’t think nothin’s workin’.”

“It’s okay, I know,” she nodded. “You won’t feel this way forever, I promise. Just keep fighting, okay? I know you know how to fight.”

That, at least, made him smirk slightly, a slight note of humor finding his eyes. It was a relief to see it there.

“Yeah. I’mma hold you to that promise, darlin’, just so y’know…”

“Of course,” Jean smiled, finally pulling away and ruffling Brian’s hair on her way to get her shoes.


	13. Wolverine Compromised

Jean didn’t discover that Logan had stopped taking his medication until a week after the fact - he simply vanished before breakfast that day without warning and she discovered him out in the woods, perched atop one of his favorite boulders and fully switched over to the Wolverine.

He was crouched on all fours, almost sitting, barefoot and wearing only his jeans with the waistband of his underwear just slightly visible over top of them. He didn’t even have his belt, and while it wasn’t freezing out, it was certainly chilly enough that most people wouldn’t go outside dressed like this. Wolverine didn’t seem to be bothered by it, though; his back and chest hair were fluffed a little, but beyond that he looked unaffected.

Wolverine knew Jean was there, and she felt it, but he didn’t mind. He recognized her scent, knew she was his mate, and was perfectly accepting of her presence. That didn’t mean he wasn’t dangerous, though. Wolverine was infinitely more volatile than Logan, all ruthless instinct and predatory nature with no shred of human thought to temper him. People Logan ordinarily recognized as friends, or even tolerated, would be attacked and destroyed by Wolverine if they showed the slightest sign of hostile behavior.

“Logan?” Jean called out softly.

Wolverine snorted and jerked his head slightly to the left as an indicator that he’d heard, but his back still faced her and she couldn’t see his expression. For the moment he seemed calm, at least.

“Logan, can you hear me? You switched, and I know you haven’t been taking your prescriptions. I want to just bring you back inside and give you your medications, okay?”

No reaction. Wolverine didn’t comprehend words.

“Logan…?”

He couldn’t be drawn out, at least not this way. But Jean needed him to come back to himself, and simply waiting until he switched again was dangerous. She could try doing it psychically, but when Wolverine was in charge his mind was incredibly difficult to hold or even enter. The animal psyche was good at protecting itself.

Wolverine knew nothing about shielding, though, so at least she could hear what he was feeling. The subtle scents and noises of prey, though he’d already chased down and eaten several squirrels and at least one rabbit, so he had no need to hunt for the time being. The presence of his mate. The smell of his cubs on her clothes, assuring him that they weren’t in danger and were taken care of. The sun on his skin and in his fur, warming him. He was content with the world.

Actually, that made Jean hurt for him all over again. Because only Wolverine could recognize this peaceful feeling, that everything was taken care of, he had the situation well under control. But Wolverine could snap and turn massively destructive without warning, and Logan wanted to utterly obliterate and destroy that part of himself even as he turned to it for the only amount of safety that was guaranteed him. Logan would never find that peace, or at least as far as he knew. He was trapped by this insufferable pendulum, slipping between a violent, thoughtless animal and such intense emotional suffering that he almost couldn’t see straight anymore.

Jean closed the distance between them, carefully and avoiding sudden movements, to stand slightly behind and to his left. She rested a palm on his bare shoulder. Wolverine rumbled in answer, an affectionate noise, not hostile. The hair on his back, chest and even his arms fluffed up completely now, but from positive emotions. He liked having her close by and touching his skin.

Wolverine twisted around, pulling her firmly but tenderly to sit on the rock in front of him. It was warm from the sun already, and as his arms closed across her she was pressed into the hard muscle of his torso. Jean felt the end of his nose in her hair, drowning his senses with the comfort that was _her_. The scent told him everything he needed; cubs, food, nest, mate. _Home._ He had no aversions to the responsibility of his young, either. He would kill for them or die for them, whichever they needed, curl up beside them in his nest with his mate to keep them warm and safe.

Why, Jean wondered, did Logan hate Wolverine so much?

Of course the animal could be unstable and terrifying, but this quiet and peaceful moment in the trees finally made her realize that Wolverine was anything but unpredictable. Everything he did, everything he was, pointed to the welfare of his mate and his cubs. Nothing else mattered, he didn’t need any more than that. His pack. None of the tendency for mental health problems or thinking every tiny detail into some grand over-complicated production. No voice telling him that he wasn’t good enough, wasn’t smart enough, wasn’t strong enough, wasn’t _enough,_ period.

So, by this logic, Wolverine wasn’t technically his own personality - he was the psychological aspects of Logan’s mutation, just separated from his conscious mind. The two halves just needed to be put back together again…

Well, actually, that made everything so much easier in so many ways, and Jean couldn’t help the wide smile that found her at the revelation.

Now she just needed him to switch back so she could tell him.

* * *

 

“Hank?” Jean shouted over her shoulder, knowing his enhanced senses would catch her voice even from across the infirmary. “If he still hasn’t switched back by tomorrow morning, I think we’ll have to pin him like you said and force him to take his meds…”

Wolverine had been in charge for three days now, and wasn’t showing any signs of receding. Of course, Brian and Laura were tickled pink by this. As soon as their classes ended they’d run right out to the woods and romp with him, climbing trees and killing whatever small mammals they could get their claws on. They hadn’t been doing their homework the last two nights as a consequence, and refused to come back inside until long past the time they were supposed to go to bed. They wanted Wolverine to stay - he treated them like his children.

“Dammit, Logan… why can’t you just embrace him?” Jean whispered to herself, shuffling some papers on her desk and ultimately cramming them into a folder that was already about to burst.

She wasn’t upset with her boyfriend, though, just frustrated at her own inability to help. Truthfully, Jean wanted both of them, Wolverine’s protective nature with Logan’s intelligence and unconditional love. Logan needed to understand the animal, and Wolverine needed to accept the man, but neither were willing to do so. He was in a power struggle with himself, and both sides seemed to be losing. It was pulling him steadily towards the edge of where he’d fall into complete disarray and psychosis.

The sound of a throat being cleared startled Jean back into the real world, and when she turned to look she froze when her eyes landed on Sabertooth. He was standing at least three and a half meters away, staring into the floor so intently it might’ve held every answer to every question in the universe, and even though his hands were behind his back she could tell he was wringing them. Emma and Hank were watching attentively.

“Look, uh, gettin’ sent back to prison next week,” Creed grumbled, sounding immensely uncomfortable. Neither of those things made her feel better about the fact that he was there talking to her at all. “An’ they said… if I wanna get Jimmy back, I gotta… uh… know this ain’t gonna make up for nothin’, but I’m real sorry for what I did. Just couldn’t help it.”

Jean wasn’t sure which was more unbelievable - the fact that such a cruel and brutal man was actually _apologizing,_ or the fact that she could tell he meant it. Hank had achieved a miracle of modern science. Dumbstruck, it took her several minutes to finally answer.

“Well, you’re right, it doesn’t make up for anything,” Jean admitted. “But you’re taking positive steps.”

“Think he’ll let me back in?”

How could he ask that, especially to her face…?

“I can’t speak for him right now, Mr. Creed, and I make no promises. You can’t undo what’s happened, and I’m not going to tell him whether he should forgive you or not. You’ll have to convince him on your own.”

“Got it.” Creed scratched his head, an agitated motion. “You ain’t gonna forgive me, neither.”

“No, I’m not,” Jean agreed. But she wouldn’t be a medical professional without adding her next statement. “I know why you did it, though, and I understand some of the blame is with your mental conditioning. So whether I forgive you or not isn’t really important. It matters if you keep making progress and eventually forgive yourself. And for what it’s worth, I also know how difficult it was for you to address this.”

“Yeah.”

“Whether or not Logan accepts you back into his life is up to him,” Jean reiterated. “And if he does, _if,_ it won’t be for a while.”

“Makes sense.” His steel-gray eyes finally raised. “Don’t blame you none for not forgivin’ me.”

“Good. I have to get back to work.”

So dismissed, Jean watched him turn and head back to the isolation room with Emma. She didn’t look away until he’d vanished from sight, and only then let her anxiety flood back to the surface. Her hands trembled - because of course they did - and Jean knew she wasn’t going to get any of her paperwork done for several hours.

Honestly, though, a large part of her was relieved, too. She’d finally confronted Creed about it, and held firm throughout the conversation. A quick glance gave her a smile and a nod from Hank, too; he was very proud of her for facing the situation head-on.

“I don’t know how you did it, but I think you should get a Nobel prize,” Jean informed him.

Hank chuckled and paced over to sit in the spare chair by her desk. “Having a similar set of instincts certainly helped,” he admitted, swinging up one leg to cross it over his other knee and letting his furry blue paw dangle in the air. “I’ve already spoken with the administration of The Vault last night, and SHIELD has agreed to the precautions and measures I suggested. It certainly seems they’re going to take this project with his psychiatric rehabilitation seriously, and I will be given a pass that will allow me to check in with him once a month.”

“That’s great,” Jean smiled, nodding. “And what about Brian?”

“Well, as Brian is a minor and untrained, he wouldn’t be allowed to visit Creed until the age of twenty. But providing he behaves himself for an entire week, at the end of it they will allow him to Skype with his son for two hours. Brian seemed perfectly accepting of this idea, but I’m also quite certain he’s relieved to be remaining here with you and Logan for the time being.”

“Speaking of Logan…”

Hank sighed.

“Yes, I heard what you said a few minutes ago. You have my sympathies completely, my dear. _Both_ of you. And I understand your dilemma.”

It had occurred to Jean yesterday afternoon that if they really needed to they could dissolve the medications into sterile saline and inject Logan while he was asleep, but that would be a blatant violation of his trust in her and she had no doubt he’d wake up and realize what was taking place. That alone would mean he’d never feel safe with her again.

“I wish this wasn’t such a common problem,” she muttered eventually. “I knew going in that almost every patient on these medications stops taking them cold-turkey at least once, but I… I just thought Logan might understand not to. I even explained it to him when he started on them.”

“Given what his captors attempted to use as a control method, it’s quite unsurprising that he’s less than enthusiastic about continuing on his regimen of prescriptions,” Hank pointed out. “Of course he’s always had misgivings about the Ativan, but the other two… we can repeat to him that he had improved so much because of them until we’re blue in the face, but if he simply refuses them again we can’t force him. Although... what about… what was it called… Kendra’s Law? I thought I read something about that after I returned from politics.”

“Kendra’s Law is to help prevent dangerously ill people from going without adequate psychiatric care if they’re a threat to others, but it still doesn’t let us require patients to take medications against their will. We can only inform and suggest, because… dammit.” Jean almost never swore, but she couldn’t help it now. “That actually means that we can’t just catch him by surprise and inject him, it would be illegal. We have to wait until he switches and try to keep him from attacking somebody in the meantime.”

“I see… what’s the longest recorded time he’s spent in altered consciousness?”

Jean thought back to Logan’s e-file from Alkali Lake and swallowed hard: “Years.”

* * *

 

**ALKALI-TRANSIGEN**

**Bioengineering Defense Division  
** (In Cooperation With Essex Corp. Genetics)

**PROJECT TITLE** Weapons Plus Program  
**PROJECT SUBGROUP** Weapon X  
**PROJECT STATUS** Classified  
**PRIORITY LEVEL** Alpha  
**ACCESS** Restricted To Research Team WPX-08  
**MILITARY SUPERVISOR** Col. William Stryker, Jr.  
**ENGINEERING SUPERVISOR** Dr. Zander Rice, PhD  
**MEDICAL SUPERVISOR** Dr. Abraham Cornelius, MD

**SUBJECT NAME** James “Logan” Howlett  
**PLACE OF ORIGIN** Canada (Alberta Province)  
**DATE OF BIRTH** 23 March 1832  
**DATE OF DEATH** N/A  
**MUTANT** Yes  
**ABILITY CLASSIFICATION LEVEL** 3  
**ABILITY CLASSIFICATION SUBLEVEL** Moderate/Severe  
**PROGRAM SERVICE** February 1973-May 1973, April 1979, August 2003-Ongoing  
**RECRUITMENT PHASE** Completed  
**PROCESSING PHASE**  Completed  
**EXPERIMENTATION PHASE** Partially Completed/Ongoing  
**TESTING PHASE** Partially Completed/Compromised  
**PHYSICAL CONDITIONING PHASE** N/A  
**PSYCHOLOGICAL CONDITIONING PHASE** Partially Completed/Ongoing  
**COMBAT TRAINING** N/A  
**FINE TUNING PHASE** Ongoing  
**COMPLETION PHASE** Pending  
**DEPLOYMENT** Pending  
**FIELD RELIABLE** N/A  
**OBEDIENCE** N/A  
**DISCIPLINE** N/A  
**PHYSICAL STABILITY** 99% (Exceptional)  
**PSYCHOLOGICAL STABILITY** 0% (Extremely Volatile)

**SURGICAL ENHANCEMENTS** Yes  
**CHEMICAL ENHANCEMENTS** No  
**PSYCHOLOGICAL ENHANCEMENTS** Unsuccessful/Compromised  
**PROCEDURAL NOTES** Subject successfully completed experimental procedure _No. 931-Echo-Bravo_. Strengthening grafts took in 100% of implant sites. Subject experienced respiratory/cardiac/neurological arrest for 29.08 seconds, but recovered unassisted. Support staff and security staff unable to apprehend subject.

**PHYSICAL CONDITIONING** No  
**PSYCHOLOGICAL CONDITIONING** Unsuccessful/Compromised  
**CONDITIONING NOTES** Subject recruited at maximum physical fitness level (training/conditioning not needed). Attempts to refine subject’s mental capacity incomplete or ineffective. Further attempts ongoing.

**MILITARY SUPERVISOR NOTES** Subject was recruited in February 1973 but deserted the program in May 1973. Subject recaptured for experimental procedure _No. 931-Echo-Bravo_ in April 1979. Subject sustained significant injuries to the cranium and gray matter but recovered unassisted and escaped. Subject located and detained in August 2003. Subject is currently under corrective measures to stabilize and discipline his psychological state, but all measures continue to prove ineffective.

**ENGINEERING SUPERVISOR NOTES** Subject underwent experimental procedure _No. 931-Echo-Bravo_ and was successfully implanted with full skeletal grafts of the classified material. Experiment completed and deemed viable. Procedural steps will be revised in some areas to promote efficiency with lower monetary cost being a secondary goal.

**MEDICAL SUPERVISOR NOTES** Following significant enhancements to security and containment measures, subject has failed to escape since his detainment in August 2003. Subject must be physically restrained at all times unless otherwise indicated for specific procedures. Subject continues to display homicidal intent. Prior to November 2004 subject was documented having multiple instances of extreme paranoia and violent psychosis, during which his sentient qualities are theorized to have been suppressed. In November 2004 subject entered this state of altered consciousness and has remained so. As of January 2019 subject has only been documented leaving said state once in June 2016. During the incident, female subject from Fort Benning facility (Georgia) was placed in containment in our complex. Subject’s restraints were removed, but he refused to interact with female subject or support staff. Experiment deemed non-viable and female subject removed after 45 minutes. Subject placed with military staff and support staff for negative reinforcement and corrective measures. Subject reverted to the altered state and remains so at the time of recording. Corrective measures continue to prove ineffective or are interrupted prior to completion.


	14. Theraputic Kissing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> References to slurs against race and sexual orientation at the beginning of this chapter, but it's very brief and only present because it was typical of the time period. Also the reference Logan makes to the Tet Offensive is an ambiguous nod to *Full Metal Jacket*, because why not.

_“Fucking gooks,” Peterson was grumbling. “Always the same stupid rumor about that new-year thing, and this time of course it was fucking true…”_

_“Grmph,” Logan grunted in agreement, not looking up from his disassembled weapon as his long fingers were wiping the parts clean._

_“Hey Jimmy, you got smokes?”_

_“Just cigars, an’ I sure as shit ain’t sharin’ them with you, Victor…”_

_“Heads up,” Peterson offered, and Logan heard the pack of Winstons sail lightly through the air before being caught by one of his brother’s strong hands. And then: “Hey Sarge.” God dammit. Couldn’t that loudmouth PFC keep his damn questions to himself for once? “How come Creed’s the only one who calls you that? You don’t let us get away with it…”_

_“’Cause I’m the fuckin’ platoon sergeant an’ I fuckin’ feel like it,” Logan growled, still not moving his eyes from the M-16. Shitty weapon - made him long for the 45-cal Thompson he’d been issued in 1944. “Now shut your fuckin’ trap, I’m tryin’a concentrate here an’ I don’t need none’a your jaw-jackin’.”_

_“Leave Jimmy be, he’s gettin’ all kinds’a pissy after them gooks made him stop drinkin’,” Victor snickered, cracking his knuckles loudly and tossing his sweat-stained undershirt onto his bunk._

_“Yeah, like you’re one to talk,” Brantly shot back. He wasn’t such a bad kid, Logan thought. In fact, given that he wasn’t such a bad kid, it made one wonder how he’d lasted so long in this hell-hole… “How many reprimands did you get from the LT this week already? Three? Just for pounding bourbon on watch?”_

_“Fuck you, you snot-nosed little fag,” Victor spat. “I’mma gut you an’ feed you to the snakes-”_

_“Hey!” Logan barked, staring pointedly at his older brother. “Enough. Just ’cause McCready stubbed his fuckin’ toe again an’ landed his worthless fat ass with the medics don’t mean you get a free fuckin’ pass, Corporal. Go fuckin’ report yourself to the captain, I ain’t got the energy to deal with this shit right now… an’ Private, you gotta stop pickin’ fights with him. Next time it happens I’mma stomp both’a your sorry skins.”_

_Victor offered a sarcastic salute before leaving with a sneer. Logan had no illusions that his brother would actually follow the order, but just having him somewhere else was enough. If he wasn’t a super-healer this would be giving him a migraine, probably. Maybe? Honestly, he’d never had one, and he wasn’t even completely sure what a migraine actually was…_

* * *

 

Logan opened his eyes - he’d fallen asleep? Hmm… but he’d been cleaning his weapon. He must’ve been really tired somehow, and his bunk was weirdly comfortable. The room was too clean, the other bunks were missing. It didn’t stink of sweat and stale cigarettes, either. Where were the others? He thought he had a patrol with them this morning. His footlocker had gone somewhere, he couldn’t find his boots, and why was he in sweats? He always slept in his uniform pants in case he had to get up in the middle of the night. His M-16 was gone, and he couldn’t find his LBV, his flak vest, or even his sidearm. What the fuck was going on here?

Climbing to his feet, Logan searched high and low for his gear. The closest he came up with was a pair faded and battered fatigue pants, a light gray sleeveless undershirt, and a pair of combat boots that were definitely not his. Or at least he didn’t think they were. The togs were his size, but they were very obviously not designed for jungle combat and he didn’t think they were GI at all.

A bathroom - the mirror showed him that his hair and beard wouldn’t pass inspection. What the fuck was going on this morning? Well, his hair could wait. Logan quickly shaved smooth around his mouth and the underside of his jaw, then trimmed down the scruffy muttonchops over his cheeks. Still not technically meeting regs, but he was a platoon sergeant and easily the company’s best NCO, so Dolan usually let him get away with it. The captain had just been a snot-nosed rookie when they’d met, and Logan had taken the young officer under his wing, so they were buddies and he pulled a lot of stunts that wouldn’t have otherwise flown as a result.

Suitably cleaned up, Logan took note of another person’s scent in the room. It was a pleasant smell, not particularly fresh, though he could tell they’d been here a few hours ago at least. Tracking it led him into a hall and down two flights of stairs. He noticed a clock at one point; how the hell was it almost noon?! He’d never been late like this before!

But something about that scent pulled him along, and Logan found he couldn’t stop tracking it. A few voices called out his name from somewhere, but he ignored them. They weren’t important at the moment. He had to find the end of this invisible trail.

An elevator, which led down into what he assumed was the basement as it had no windows. The walls were… blued steel? Hmm… The scent was stronger approaching an odd circular door with a stylized X molded into the metal, and when Logan stepped close to it he almost threw himself back in surprise when it slid open on its own. Inside looked like some kind of sci-fi medical setup like they might have in a moon base or something. Was that it? Was he in the future on a space station? Had they finally gone to war with the Soviets? Maybe that was why they were on the moon, the nuclear war had happened and Earth couldn’t be lived on by humans anymore.

Cautiously slipping into the place, he discovered an alcove, not quite a room of its own but certainly out of the way, which had a desk. A filing cabinet on the left, a metal folding chair on the right so someone else could sit and talk he assumed… and a person in a white doctor’s coat with gorgeous red hair pulled up stylishly. Most of the doctors he’d met were men, though… maybe she was a nurse. But the lab coat…

“Hey lady, you wanna tell me what the fuck’s goin’ on here?” Logan demanded loudly, and she nearly jumped through the ceiling. “Can’t find my unit, all'a my shit’s missin’ an’ I ain’t gotta fuckin’ clue where I am right now…”

She whipped around in her desk chair, a stapled packet gripped so hard it was crumpling in her hand, and he felt his eyebrows raise; he knew her…

_Jean. Jean Grey, doctor, friend, mate, surrogate mother of his cubs…_

“Logan?” she gasped.

“Jeannie? The hell’s goin’ on, darlin’? Can’t find nobody, an’ I woke up here… last night I was in the barracks with the guys. What is this place? Looks like a space outpost or somethin’, we have the nukes go off yet?”

“Logan I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Jean answered after a pause.

“Whaddaya mean? You gotta know, you’re here too… Jesus fuck, I finally lose my shit?” Logan grumbled, breathing in an impatient huff through his nose.

“Logan-” She was standing, now, with her hands on his upper arms. “-you know where we are. You’ve been here since February and it’s almost November. We rescued you from Alkali Lake. You’re building a motorcycle in the garage. You have therapy with Charles every afternoon. Your daughter and your nephew are always trying to get your attention but you don’t want to spend time with them because you’re afraid.”

“Christ, anythin’ else?” Logan snorted, not believing a word of this.

“You’re my boyfriend and I love you,” Jean answered, her voice very quiet.

The slightly sad tone of her words raced through him like an electric shock, and very suddenly Logan remembered everything. How had he _not_ remembered? 'Nam had been almost fifty years ago. He took in a long but silent breath and started to tremble slightly.

“Fuck… god, baby, I’m sorry,” he choked out, sinking into the folding chair because he didn’t trust his legs at the moment. “Just forgot… thought I was… they fuckin’ ambushed us on Tet, brass said they weren’t gonna but they did an’ one’a my squad leaders almost bit it. Thought I was there again.”

“It’s okay, it’s not your fault,” Jean soothed, running a soft hand down the back of his head and neck. She lightly kissed his temple. “It’s okay for you to be confused sometimes, especially after a switch…”

“Switch? Dammit… fuckin’ animal. He’s fuckin’ me up somethin’ good.”

“No, you just haven’t been taking your medications,” she told him. He’d thought she would be upset with him for that, but her voice was as calm and gentle as ever. “Why did you stop taking them? Do you know?”

“Uh…” Logan frowned, racking his brain. “I mean… weren’t feelin’ good, an’ Chuck said somethin’ ’bout the fuckin’ lorazepam. Don’t like that shit, darlin’, an’ made me think the other two could be just as bad or somethin’ I guess. Didn’t wanna be drugged.”

“I understand,” Jean nodded, which surprised him. “I’m not going to force you to start taking them again, Logan. But while you were taking them the way we told you to, you were doing a lot better. You were calmer, a lot less anxious, you slept better and you stopped switching after about two weeks. I know you must have felt some relief in your mind. So I think you should at least consider starting them again.”

“But they got me at the scrapyard,” Logan protested, shaking his head but with his eyes still meeting hers. “Couldn’t let Wolverine save me, an’ they got me ’cause’a it. Meds make me weak…”

“We’ve found the location of every single one of their labs in the continental US,” she informed him. “SHIELD and the FBI are cleaning house as we speak. Even if they have international facilities, it’ll take them years at least to make it back here, and we’re not going to let them. You’re safer from them than you’ve ever been, I promise.”

“No,” he argued. “Can’t promise things like that, darlin’, ’cause you ain’t never gonna be a hundr’d percent sure. ’Sides, I ain’t a real big fan’a promises anyway. Never get kept.”

“Hey, have I ever lied to you?” Jean countered, giving him a warm smile.

Logan couldn’t help his mouth quirking into a similar expression.

“No, baby. You always been straight with me.” Despite his rude awakening this… noon… and almost losing touch with reality again, the love and tenderness he got from her felt like his skin did when he sat in the sun outside, making his spirits start to lift for the first time in weeks. What had he done to deserve this amazing woman? “So you really ain’t gonna force-feed me that shit?”

“Even if I wanted to, it’s illegal in this state,” Jean shrugged, slightly teasing. Then, more seriously, she added, “I don’t, though. I just want you to get better, baby, you know that. Whether you start taking your scrips again or not, I’ll still do my best to help you cope.”

“But you an’ Hank ain’t gonna keep shootin’ me up with that shit that makes me tired, right?”

Jean gave him a long look, then scooted her rolling desk chair over and took both his hands in hers. “Logan, I won’t have to unless you’re hurting yourself again. You almost degloved your entire face last time before we sedated you.”

“Grows back…”

“That’s not the point.” Her thumbs swiped across the backs of his hands. “I don’t like watching you bleed.”

“I don’t like it neither, Jeannie, just sometimes don’t got no other way to focus.”

“Logan…”

“No more’a that shit,” he insisted, cutting her off. His fingers clenched around hers. “You can’t… Jeannie, don’t keep stickin’ me. Makes me vulnerable. Had nightmares sometimes ’bout the labs, an’ you’re the one druggin’ me, helpin’ them fuck me up. I can’t not think ’bout it.”

“They’re just dreams, I’d _never_ do anything like that.”

“I know,” he nodded, swallowing at the vicious feelings from those nights flooding back into his head. “Just… seem so real, y’know? Like the actual memories I got floatin’ ’round in there. Ain’t there some other way to get my ass back on track that ain’t gonna knock me out for the rest’a the day?”

“Not until you start taking your therapy with Charles seriously,” Jean answered, but not in a harsh tone. She was simply relaying a statement of fact. “Your only option besides medication is to replace unhealthy coping skills with healthy ones. In most cases, the medications and the therapy are both necessary for recovery. And it takes years.”

“That’s fuckin’ encouragin’, ain’t it?” Logan muttered in bitter sarcasm. “Prob’ly just gonna be stuck this way forever, then. Therapy’s bullshit an’ I’m sick’a bein’ drugged outta my mind.”

“Therapy isn’t just sitting and talking, you know.” Hmm, that wasn’t what he’d expected at all. “There’s more than one kind, and some of them don’t feel like therapy at all.”

Caught completely off guard, Logan forgot what his next argument had been and raised his left eyebrow. His curiosity got the better of him. “Like what?”

Jean just smiled in answer, gently tugging him out of the chair by his hands. He let his girlfriend lead him up to the ground floor and then out onto the grounds, fingers still twined together, eventually ending at the edge where the trees began. There was one of those lacquered wooden benches nearby, which she sat him in.

“Have you ever heard the term ‘mindfulness’ before?” Jean asked, settling beside him and letting him slip an arm across her shoulders.

“Uh… don’t sound real familiar, no.”

“The long and short of mindfulness boils down to being in the present. You just focus on the moment you’re in and where you are right now, not thinking and worrying about the past or future. It helps you turn off the negative thoughts, especially if you practice it every day.”

“A’right,” Logan nodded slowly, eyeing her. “An’... how’s that s’posed to work?”

“It shouldn’t be too hard for you, actually. Now, before I tell you anything else, I want you to sit back in the bench and just close your eyes.” Logan was incredibly confused, but he trusted Jean and did as he was told without protest. She leaned comfortably into him. “Now, tell me everything you can hear.”

“Okay,” he nodded. “’Bout sixteen diff’r’nt kinds’a bird. All kinds’a rodents, too, an’ a stray cat stalkin’ one through… bunch’a ferns, I think. Wind’s blowin’ a little, south-southeast. You breathin’, an’ your heartbeat. Mine too. Couple’a kids playin’ basketball on the back lawn. Branch just fell off a tree, ’bout fourteen paces to my eight. Some kid’s stereo's too loud… an’ they’re listenin’ to Nickelback! The fuck’s wrong with them?”

Jean chuckled. “Alright, what do you feel?”

“My feet are sweatin',” Logan answered, drawing another laugh. He smirked. “Bench under my ass, ground under my boots, same wind blowin’. Sun’s warmin’ up my hair. You. You’re all soft an’ comfy on me.”

“Good.” She lightly patted his shoulder. “And now everything you smell.”

“Ain’t many worms today, no rain recently so they ain’t up on the surface so much. Hawk eatin’ a snake. Some kid who ain’t old enough to smoke’s been out here ’bout two hours ago an’ smoked half a pack’a Camels. Storm gutter’s got mold in it, that ain’t real surprisin’, though. Used to be a hive’a bees, but they all got killed ’bout a week ago by hornets. Sabertooth ain’t been out in the woods since yesterday mornin’. Grass got cut right before we got out here. Both’a the hellions been out here a lot lately. You’re wearin’ the expensive chemicals today.”

Jean chuckled at him. “Not the _really_ expensive ones, those are only for Charles’ fundraising events.”

“Don’t matter. All’a that shit burns my nose. Don’t even need it, darlin’, you smell beautiful all on your own.” He forgot to keep his eyes closed and looked over at her, seeing her turning the slightest shade of pink at the compliment. He’d meant it, though, and - wait, why was she smiling at him like that? “Somethin’ you ain’t tellin’ me, Jeannie?”

“You just did an entire therapy session without even realizing it, baby.”

“Huh?” was all he could get out, feeling dumbstruck.

“Focusing on the small, neutral details about your surroundings is a form of mindfulness,” Jean explained. “It should be a very easy exercise for you to do anyway, you’re highly oriented around your senses. So if you start to get upset while I’m around I’ll remind you, and I’ll tell the professor to keep an eye out, too. Eventually you’ll start remembering to do it all on your own.”

“Hmm,” Logan grunted, but the noise was thoughtful.

“So, was I right, or was I right?” she questioned, only bragging slightly for the sake of humor.

Logan couldn’t stop a snort of laughter escaping. “Yeah, darlin’, you were right. Usually seems like a good thing, though. Better’n me bein’ right, anyway.”

Jean brushed the backs of her fingers over the freshly-trimmed fur along his cheek: “It’s nice seeing you feel better, you know. I like seeing you smile this way.”

“Don’t usually got a reason to,” he shrugged, leaning into her touch.

“Well, you should do it more often. It only makes you more gorgeous.”

“Mph, ain’t that what I’m s’posed to say to you, baby?” Logan snickered, squeezing her a little with the arm that was around her shoulders.

“Hey, you _are,_ ” Jean insisted, pushing her hand lightly against him. “You’re a beautiful man, there really is a reason why all the girls who go to school here slobber like dobermans when they see you in the halls.”

“Yeah, I still ain’t thrilled ’bout that idea,” he grumbled, “’specially after the thing at the mall with Kitty and Jubilee… so fuckin’ uncomfortable.”

“I can’t believe you’re still on about that, they were just trying to get a rise out of you.”

“Sure, that’s why Jubilee was gushin’ ’bout me like that’n askin’ you how old I am. Yankin’ my chain there for real, Jeannie.”

“For the record, you’re a hundred and eighty-seven years old,” she informed him.

“The fuck? How’d you find that one out?”

“Creed’s memories,” she muttered dryly. “Not that I try to look at what I dug up in his head all the time, of course. But I did file that one away, I just forgot to tell you until now.”

“Jesus, an’ it took this long to start gettin’ this gray in there?” Logan ran two fingers across his left temple. “Why’re you datin’ me, Jeannie? That makes me, what, six fuckin’ times your age or somethin’?”

“Of course you’d worry about that, because there’s plenty of women in your peer group,” his girlfriend teased, “especially considering you also have an eleven-year-old daughter. I think you really need to just count this under the sentiment of age just being a number, baby.”

“Grmph.”

“Oh, stop,” Jean smiled with mock-annoyance. “How can you be convinced?”

“With kisses,” Logan answered immediately.

They both leaned slightly together, meeting halfway. His eyes closed involuntarily when her soft mouth found his - not an act of sexual need, but rather one of love. (It did give him the promising start of a hard-on, but for once that wasn’t a priority and he ignored it.) Logan still didn’t understand how a twisted abortion of medical science like him had someone as wonderful of Jean here like this, genuinely caring for him as intensely as he did for her, but the sweet taste of her lips washed the question from his mind. She’d probably done that on purpose, actually, but he certainly wasn’t going to start bitching about it.

Logan turned everything over in his mind briefly, then pulled away for a moment. “Okay.”

“Hmm? Okay what?”

“Okay, darlin’. I’mma go back on my meds. Can’t have Wolverine hoggin’ all’a these kinds’a things to himself, after all.”

Jean kissed him again for a long moment, and when he looked the light in her eyes from her smile could outshine the sun. “I think you’re making the right call, Logan. Thank you.”

“You don’t gotta be thankin’ me, Jeannie. You’re the one always smackin’ sense into my stupid ass, after all.”

She shut him up with more kisses.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When Jean tells Logan how she knows his age, she's actually lying - she knows because of his file from Alkali Lake. But she knows it wouldn't be a good idea for him to read that file or even know it exists at all.
> 
> Military abbreviations:
> 
> PFC=Private First Class  
> LT=Slang, short for "lieutenant" and pronounced "ell-tee"  
> LBV=Load-bearing vest  
> NCO=Non-commissioned officer  
> GI=Government issue


	15. The Warmth Of Mortality

“You up to somethin’, Jeannie?”

“Maybe a little,” she smiled at him, “but I’m mostly just concerned about what Hank might find in your blood smear.”

Logan snorted. “Think I’m the one oughta be worried ’bout that, darlin’.”

“Tough.” Jean grabbed onto his hand as they entered the infirmary. “Besides, you love it.”

“Heh, yeah,” he admitted, smirking a little at her.

They reached Hank’s desk: “Ah, good morning.” He set down his pen and put his glasses onto the open folder in front of him, then got up from his rolling chair. “How are you feeling today, Logan?”

“Uh…” He suddenly noticed the absence of Victor’s smell. The bastard was finally locked up where he belonged. “Better now that my brother ain’t here no more. Havin’ him this close to Jeannie all the time was makin’ me nervous.”

“I understand. But that’s not what we’re here for, is it?” The trio went into one of the smaller adjacent rooms that had all the lab equipment in it, and Logan almost instantly lost track of the situation as the furry blue mutant began rapidly scribbling diagrams across a whiteboard. “After running the battery of tests I deemed appropriate and cross-referencing your samples with the data we originally collected when you first came to stay with us…”

The techno-medical babble was totally lost on him, going in one ear and straight out the other. He had no hope of keeping up, but at least Jean seemed to be following it okay, so maybe she could explain it to him.

“...and through multiple analyses I have concluded that the alterations will gradually negate certain aspects of your mutation. It should not be an issue for at least a decade, though.”

That got his attention and he focused on the conversation at hand again.

“You dumb all’a that down for me, Jeannie? I caught ’bout three words’a that.”

“Basically the experimental serum they used to suppress your healing factor was so powerful it changed your blood. Between that and the adamantium on your bones, your DNA has been permanently changed. That’s why you’ve started to look older.”

“Okay, that it?”

“No…” Jean shook her head and looked a little sad, which confused him. “Your healing factor’s starting to get weaker. You probably won’t notice a difference for a while, but eventually you won’t recover any faster than a normal human. In short, it… means you’re going to get old and die.”

Logan’s eyebrows came together and he tried to say something, but the words crumbled before they even reached his throat. He opened his mouth and then closed it again, his eyes not leaving hers, and after a long moment he finally turned and sank slowly into a nearby desk chair. This wasn’t what he’d thought Hank would find at all.

“Logan?” Jean practically whispered. She took a few steps towards him but stopped. “Logan, are you okay?”

His eyes fixed on the floor in front of him and he fidgeted, not knowing what to do with his hands. And then his eyes closed. Their shock rolled across his senses, especially in scent, at his reaction.

Logan burst out laughing.

He didn’t know why he did it. Normally he never laughed, especially not like this, a full-on roar of hysterics where usually the most someone got was a sarcastic chuckle or a teasing snicker. This was from the bottom of his trunk, to the point where Logan was doubled over in his seat with his arms across his stomach. He couldn’t breathe, it hurt to keep laughing, the effort was making tears spring up in his eyes, but he just couldn’t stop. Eventually he fell completely out of his chair and lay sideways on the floor, gasping for air between another fit of giggles.

Jean crouched down beside him. Logan was fine letting her cradle his head until he got a grip on himself enough to sit back up, leaning his shoulder into her.

“Are you okay?” she asked again, sounding very concerned.

“Yeah, darlin’, I’m great,” Logan grinned, completely honest. He climbed to his feet and pulled her after him. “Y’know what this really means, right?”

“Um… no, I don’t think I do,” she answered, looking at him sideways.

“Jesus, baby, mean’s I don’t gotta keep goin’ forever no more. I ain’t gonna still be kickin’ ’round long after you, neither. You understand? Don’t gotta just watch you go an’ still be here after, ’cause I’mma bite it ’bout the same time.”

Realization bloomed in her eyes, and Logan almost expected her to still look sad or to be disappointed somehow, but she reflected his own sudden joy at this knowledge. Because now, knowing that things would finally end on their own, he had no reason to try and speed up the process. The labs were being destroyed, his brother would get fixed, and he was finally mortal. He could just sit back and enjoy life now, like everyone else, and the feeling was incredible.

Logan must’ve let the mischievous thought slip into his expression, or maybe she psychically felt it, because now she eyed him: “No, don’t even think about it, I have to go teach in twenty min-” With a playful growl he grabbed her, not letting her finish the sentence. Logan hoisted Jean in one quick motion until he was carrying her over his shoulder. “AAH! Logan! Put me down, I have a class!”

She was laughing so hard, though, that the words barely came out, and he could tell she wouldn’t actually have too much of a problem despite it. So he carried her out of the infirmary and up to the third floor. The door slammed loudly when he kicked it closed behind him.

“They in class?”

“Yeah.”

“Good.”

A thorough, passionate kiss. They weren’t going to make it away from the wall.

* * *

 

“So what did you do in class today?” Jean asked conversationally.

Logan gave her an amused smirk as he scooped meat with potatoes and mushrooms onto Laura’s plate - his girlfriend had never made it to work today, and had managed to telepathically send Xavier a message saying she was compromised without offering details. After that they practically hadn’t come up for air again until Brian and Laura were about to come back upstairs.

“Professor X had us all talk about jobs during ethics,” Brian volunteered. “And about how we can still be out in the world as mutants.”

“That sounds interesting,” Jean nodded. “What else was in that discussion?”

“He gave us some, um, examples of stuff we can do once we’re done with school, and had us each say what we’d wanna be after that. Milo still wants to be an astronaut.”

“ _That’s_ realistic,” Logan snorted, sitting down across from his daughter.

Jean ignored his comment: “What about you, Brian? What do you want to do after you get out of school?”

“I don’t know,” the boy shrugged, looking uncharacteristically embarrassed at saying so. “I don’t really care, I guess, just wanna keep being here with you and Laura and Uncle Jimmy.”

Logan rolled his eyes but said nothing. It was pretty obvious by now that Brian’s stupid label for him was more or less permanent. Honestly, though, he was in such a good mood today that it didn’t bother him much right now.

“Well, there’s nothing wrong with that,” his girlfriend smiled. “You’re only in fifth grade, you’ve got plenty of time left to figure it out.” Jean turned her attention to their daughter: “What about you, Laura? What do you think you’d want to do later on?”

The girl was silent as usual, shoveling a huge bite into her mouth and staring pointedly at Logan. At last she spoke up, which they could only get her to do about once or twice a week. Her voice was quiet, but still strong. “I’m going to be an X-Man.”

Logan cocked an eyebrow: “You sure ’bout that, kid? Means you’d gotta follow orders from the dickhead in charge’a the team, y’know.”

“I’m sure.”

“Okay then,” he shrugged, turning back to his own meal. It made him curious, though. He’d asked once why Charles hadn’t tried to get him into one of those uniforms by now, to which the telepath had simply answered that he was too ill. Though at this point, he was actually vaguely considering the idea. Now that the end was in sight, he might as well actually live instead of just existing, and he knew Jean and Ororo thought he’d be a great addition. (And to make things better for his cubs, even if he still wouldn’t admit it to himself.)

Surprisingly, Laura kept talking after that, and without being prompted. “What’s your job, Daddy? You just wander around all day.”

“Uh… don’t got one yet,” Logan answered honestly. She’d never called him anything before, not even his name, so the sudden application of that title shocked him. “Too sick to work yet, but I’mma get better eventually.”

“You could be an X-Man,” Brian butted in, “like Aunt Jean.”

“Grmph.”

“Maybe he will someday,” Jeannie smiled, nodding. She must’ve heard his thoughts. Who was he kidding, of course she had. She was too close not to. Luckily, she also decided to rescue him from this awkward subject. “So what else did you do in school?”

“Ms. Darkholme’s making us do a, um, creative something for history.” Brian’s gray eyes fixed on Logan again. “She said it can be from any time before the year 2000, so, um, I was gonna write about you.”

“What now?” Logan frowned.

“I know you been around a long time, Uncle Jimmy. I was gonna ask my dad, but he’s still in jail, so I thought you can help me out with it.”

“Uh… okay… whaddya wanna know, kid?”

“Anything, whatever you remember. Only thing is she said we have to make it about something that’s, um, what’s that word… immortal.”

“Immoral,” Jean corrected with a slight chuckle.

Logan snorted. “Heh, yeah, sure know a lotta shit like that. Forty-five or seventy-two?”

“Huh?”

“Pick one.”

“Um, forty-five?”

“Good choice. Okay. ’45 we were marchin’ ’cross Europe, right? Or… maybe this was ’44, I ain’t sure no more. Anyway, so we’re marchin’, on our way to Berlin, we come across these weird-ass fuckin’ compounds, all strung ’round with razor-wire and these guard camps. But there ain’t no more guards, just these real skinny guys in striped clothes. All’a them got numbers on their arms, too, an’ they ain’t been fed in months. So we start feedin’ them, ’cause they’re so hungry it hurts. An’ it kills them. We didn’t know what the hell that was ’bout, until the medics saw what was goin’ on an’ told us to stop doin’ that. These guys just barely held down soup broth. Course we didn’t stay too long there. Place was fuckin’ creepy, so that ain’t a bad thing, neither. But, uh… didn’t hear ’bout this until a long time after, but some’a them were locked up again. By us.”

Brian’s eyes were huge with rapt attention. “Why?”

“Well, all’a these prisoners got rounded up by the fascists to be killed. They didn’t care none, just wanted these people outta their way. For bein’ diff’r’nt an’ all. Mostly ’cause’a the god they worshiped… personally I could give a shit ’bout that, there ain’t no fuckin’ god an’ I know that. But the Nazis thought it’s a big deal somehow. Anyway, so we didn’t really like that too much, an’ we let them go free. Except for… the ones who wore them pink triangles. We locked them back up, ’cause we didn’t like them, neither. An’ that ain’t okay. I didn’t know no better, really, an’ didn’t think too much ’bout it… but it’s fuckin’ disgustin’, kid, an’ don’t you forget it. Weren’t nothin’ diff’r’nt ’bout them that said they needed to die.”

“But why?”

“Absolutely no fuckin’ reason.” Logan shook his head, the images suddenly coming back to him. Watching them get shipped off, wondering about it with his brother, why some of them were taken away while the rest got medical attention. He sighed heavily. “Jeannie, you wanna talk ’bout this part? I ain’t gonna be able to explain it good.”

“I think it can wait until after dinner, actually,” Jean answered.

“Okay,” Brian nodded, looking a little scared by what he’d heard. Well, he should be, Logan thought. Then his train of thought switched to a completely different track and his expression brightened again. “Hey, it’s all weird outside now, did you see? I asked Milo about it, but, um, he just said it’s normal. I never seen it look like that, though.”

Jean smiled a little. “It’s snowing out right now, and it is normal. It happens every year, starting around now. It’ll look like that outside for a few months until the weather warms up again.”

“Is it dangerous?”

“Heh, only for jackasses who ain’t smart enough to drive the right way,” Logan snorted. “Fuckin’ morons. Bet they don’t even change their damn tires, neither.”

“Hey, language,” his girlfriend rebuked him, though there was amusement in her warm gaze. “No, it’s not usually dangerous. In fact, it can even be fun…”

Twenty minutes later the four of them were outside. Logan was just wearing an added hoodie under his flannel shirt and leather jacket, while Laura and Brian clomped around in their rubber boots with extra socks and windbreakers. The only warm clothing they used was their gloves. Jean, by contrast, was bundled up like she was going to the arctic and even had ski pants. Logan had teased her while she’d donned the gear.

“Hey! No fair!” Brian shrieked as Laura pegged a huge snowball into his face. “Uncle Jimmy! Laura’s doing it on purpose!”

Logan couldn’t help laughing at his nephew. “Well, ain’t that the point?” he asked, then lunged forward with a loud roar and tackled the boy into the white fluff. Scooping up a big fistful, he jammed it down the back of Brian’s collar and received a half-laughing and half-angry howl.

Laura seized the advantage then, heaving two hard-packed projectiles - one smacked into Logan’s right ear and the other broke over his flank. Springing to his feet, he made it about two steps before a huge pile of snow was dumped across all three of them. Sputtering and shaking it out of his fluffy black hair, Logan realized that Jean was now laughing at all of them. “I’mma get you for that, darlin’,” he warned with a vicious smile.

“I’m sure,” she snickered, giving a light telekinetic shove to his chest that sent him sprawling onto his ass.

Logan growled playfully and looked at the two cubs: “C’mon, let’s get’er!”

He was pushed back down into the cold and wet again when he tried to get up. Laura and Brian weren’t, though - Jean jabbed her index fingers at them and began “flying” them wildly over the lawn. Both kids screamed repeatedly at that, first with surprise and a little fear but then in delight with intermissions of hysterical laughter. With her attention on them, Logan was freed and got back to his feet, but he didn’t go after his girlfriend. Instead he just watched for a moment. It was really sinking in for him, this was his pack, _his family,_ three people who loved him more than anything else and always would. And he wasn’t going to outlive them, either.

Logan blinked, trying to clear the blurriness from his vision, but in spite of that he was smiling in a way he never had before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I figured I'd cut Logan a little slack, and this seemed like a good way for this segment to end...
> 
> A third segment is still a possibility, but if it happens I'm probably going to end up putting it off for a bit. Too many ideas gumming up the works like the clogged artery of a fat guy, I just can't seem to get my writing flow back to normal. So, I guess consider this series constrained to just 2 parts for now. Not saying it's impossible for me to tie it up with a third one, but if I do, it's not going to be any time soon. Sorry :(
> 
> Thoughts/questions/comments/just feeling like chatting me up? :P Comments and kudos always welcome! They help me grow as a writer, so the more I get the better I feel about posting these.

**Author's Note:**

> Another video on YouTube (also not mine) that's really in line with the tone I'm shooting for, that everyone always sees Logan as indestructible because of the adamantium and his healing factor when really he's always in pain underneath because of the way his life is:
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecelmhzMu9M
> 
> The scenes from the movie that the video's creator aren't a *perfect* match, but the song it's set to is so dead-on that I'm willing to overlook it.


End file.
